“Whose food?”

Our food.

Signs of “Turn the beet around!” (an obvious nod to the fact that most beets in the US, the source of a large percentage of our granulated sugar, are genetically modified), “Zucchini Park,” and “Take back our food!” filled Wall Street as the members and supporters of the #OccupyBigFood movement made their way into Zucotti Park, with myself and the toddler in tow, bringing up the rear.

I’d made the decision to go a long time ago, when one of the supporters left a link in my comments regarding the original affair. That scheduled Saturday was also the date of the first “Big Snow” of the pending 2011-2012 disgustingly-wet-and-blisteringly-cold season, so it was ill-attended (which meant that I wound up out there among the #OWS Tent City.)

The human mic system at Zuccotti Park blasted valuable message after valuable message, meaningful morsel of info after meaningful morsel:

“Corporate entities are ensuring big subsidies for themselves while convincing Congress to cut money from programs like SNAP…”

“The Union that makes up the people that SERVE that food stand in solidarity with the people who are treated inhumanely and are made to harvest that food for pennies,”

“We want a sustainable system that ensures and guarantees access for everyone,”

All things that we stand for here, though it may not be coming from the same angles as those at the #OccupyBigFood rally.

I attended the rally because, aside from the fact that I felt some kind of solidarity to a movement that supports living la vida locavore, but I felt like it needs to be clear that the people who complain about the current food climate are not merely wealthy and white. Persons of color, women, mothers, children… we are all affected by poor decision making, favoritism, nepotism and ass kissing that takes place in Congress, and it’s important for us to do what we can do to prevent people from dismissing valuable dialogue as “elitism,” which – as we all know – is code for “privileged white people talk.”

I stood as a part of the huge human mic system and helped convey the message that we are not powerless, we are not to be dismissed as merely “foodies” and we are not going anywhere. We – according to “you” – have money and will spend it locally and support our own system. We’ve decided yours isn’t working.

That’s what I left #OccupyBigFood with – a renewed sense in the fact that not only is the current system an utter failure, but it is up to us to change it for ourselves. If the government that we elect can justify cutting the program that funnels money into small businesses in underserved areas – because, let’s face it, that’s exactly what food stamps is and exactly what it does – thereby causing the businesses in the area to suffer as well as the people who use food stamps to buy their products, then you can rest assured that it’ll be a long damn time before they do anything to secure our food supply. They don’t care like we do, and that – at least, to me, is fine.

Why? Because if we are conscious enough to know that we should buy locally, we are also conscious enough to know that there are those of us who don’t have access, and need help getting there. If we can innovate enough to turn a backwards bathrobes (also known as a Snuggie) into a million-dollar invention, surely we can innovate to create small sub communities that can enjoy produce and meat without adulteration. We can continue to educate about healthy choices and assist, as well as support, our peers in making them.

There were a few speakers at the event – the leader of a food workers’ union, a gentleman who identified himself and his wife as “One of the 1%ers you complain about, but we stand in solidarity with you!” and a certain nutritionist you might’ve heard of, but at the end of it all, I wish I had grabbed the mic and had my OWN mic check:

“In a world where any human being with a heart believes it is acceptable to cut money intended to assist the poor in staying fed as well as funding the small businesses in the area who service those poor, it is unfathomable to me that people could turn their backs on the idea of genuinely helping and supporting one another. These companies, with their lies and disregard for their customers, they don’t give a damn about you and me… they only care about what’s in our wallets… well now, they’re not getting what’s in THERE either! I’m spending my money as far away from those corrupt big names as I possibly can, and maybe THEN the Krafts, General Mills’ and Kelloggs of the world will finally change their ways!”

Alas, I didn’t. I was too busy consoling the ornery kindergartner (!) standing on my leg. My overall point is that we don’t have enough time to wait for someone else to do this for us, and our best means of supporting the movement is by trying to funnel as much money as possible into its expansion. Multinationals started out as tiny operations once, too. Money helps any-and-everything grow. You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is. I think that message was conveyed well without me, anyway.

At any rate, the rally was successful. I’m interested in what coverage – if any – the rally may have received, and whether or not anyone was able to get my full ‘fro in a shot… er, I mean, whether the diverseness of the crowd was covered adequately. I also got to meet a certain awesome author and professor named Marion Nestle, and thank her for her book. If you didn’t notice, I’m a bit of a “follow the money” type, and talking to me in terms of logic and corrupt policy in regards to corporate decision making is a pretty good way to convince me that money, not health, was the reason behind so much of what we see in food today. You follow the money, you can find the reality behind anything. I wish more people thought that way.

Would I attend again? Of course. To help express the fact that there are people who live in food deserts who have no choice other than frito-lay products and lunchables; to remind us all that even in our quest for food sustainability, the issue of compromised health is plaguing those of us who either struggle with affording or struggle for access to fresh and local produce; and to help us realize that education and conscious consumerism are the best ways to affect change. No greater reminder of this exists, for me, than the fact that our community is so culturally and financially diverse. Some of us are in cow-pools; others have given up meat completely because they can’t afford the ethically grown stuff. Some of us are complete locavores; and some of us are strictly frozen-vegetarians. Some of us are wild pescetarians, and others are, well, budgetarians. We know Hippocrates was right – “let thy medicine be thy food, and let thy food be thy medicine” – and now it’s time the rest of the country learns that, as well.

PS: Okra pie, though?

Image credits: Erika Nicole Kendall

By Arturo R. García

The conclusion of If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise stays a little closer to home than Part 1 did, but, again, Spike Lee succeeds at telling this set of new stories through the connections not just in New Orleans, but throughout the Gulf region, before heading home for an uncompromising conclusion.

This time around, Lee starts his story with an examination of the New Orleans school system, where a look at the efforts to rebuild the Dr. King Jr. Charter School – now the only school in the Ninth Ward – segues into a discussion over the state of Louisiana’s take-over of New Orleans schools and the opening of the Recovery School District.

As the Dr. King School gets a visit from President Obama, and former Chicago school CEO Paul Vallas is brought in to serve as superintendent, we learn the recovery is far from easy: there’s mistrust of both Vallas’ approach and the teachers now working in the district; and allegations that the lingering traumas from Hurricane Katrina are still going untreated, leading to not only health issues but an increase in crime and violence: “The criminals are getting younger and younger.”

And to illustrate this case, we get maybe the saddest individual updates from When The Levees Broke: we learn that Dinerral Shavers, the Hot 8 Brass Band member and teacher we met in the first film, was shot and killed by a 15-year-old boy; and Donnell Herrington, the victim of a racially-motivated shooting chronicled in Levees, has been shot again, this time by a black man, costing him a leg.

The discussion soon turns toward the New Orlean Police Department’s reputation for corruption, and several post-Katrina high-profile cases of police brutality: like the murders of Kim Groves and Henry Glover, and the Danziger Bridge shootings give us vivid pictures of a city that, as Dr. Calvin Mackie says, “has embraced a culture of violence.”

But the man in charge when Katrina hit, divisive mayor C. Ray Nagin – how he’ll remembered, he says, “depends [on] who’s writing it” – is replaced by Mitch Landrieu, the region is already reeling from another disaster, setting up the film’s final section, a look at the BP oil spill, from the initial explosion with witness accounts of the April 20 oil-rig explosion that killed 11 people to visits with members of the fishing industry that will be devastated for who knows how long because of the spill.

The spill section actually includes the only appearances by members of the state’s Vietnamese-American community, which accounts for the state’s largest population of Asian descent and more than half of the region’s shrimping business, in a brief interview with a group of fishermen, and some remarks by Congressman Joseph Cao (R-LA), who is shown asking BP America President and Chairman Lamar McKay to commit “hara kiri” because “we do things differently in the Asian cultur.” In lieu of the variety of political figures that appear in If God Is Willing, the absence of the state’s Indian-American Gov. Bobby Jindal is particularly conspicuous; he appears twice in the background at press conferences, but not in a speaking role, perhaps because of his own record regarding oil-industry policy.

The oil spill section concludes in the quietest, most unsettling way possible: as an organ plays a funereal melody, we get a nearly day-by-day montage of the spill from Day 10 until it’s finally closed. And from there, another sobering montage: more of the dead of New Orleans, before we get a benediction of sorts from spoken-word artist Shelton Shakespear Alexander:

And here, again, Lee parts with storytelling conventions: another film would have followed Alexander’s poem with a final parade of “we’re on the way back” soundbytes. Instead, we get a callback to the opening of Part 1, as the people profiled – residents, victims, responders, survivors – dance their way out in full Saints swag before introducing themselves as they did in Levees. The stories here are far from over, of course, but the sense of resilience is still there.

By Arturo R. García

The best, most brutal thing about Spike Lee’s If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise is how it flows, showing us not just how the various residents and systems in New Orleans are connected, but how the breakdown of help for it and the state of Louisiana in the wake of both Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill has infected the community on a variety of levels.

To do this, Lee brings back many of the residents viewers met in his last foray to the Crescent City, When The Levees Broke; Phyllis Montana-Leblanc (who also appears in Treme) opens the film with the eponymous poem seen above. From there, Lee veers into what might have been used as a “happy ending” for another film: a look at the local celebration of the New Orlean Saints’ Super Bowl win. From there, the bloom off the rose starts falling, and the reality of the situation is brought home by local activist M. Endesha Jukali: “After the Superbowl on that Sunday,” he tells us. “I was gonna have to get up and figure out how I was gonna eat the next morning, how I was gonna pay my bills, how I was gonna be able to survive. I’m not a who dat. I’m a who is that?”

The episode journeys not just back to the neighborhoods Lee covered in Levees but to Houston, where thousands of exiles from the hurricane started over; to Haiti, for a look not just at that country’s own disaster, but at the historical relationship between it and Louisiana; to Mississippi, which suffered about 50 percent less damage from Katrina but got just as much federal aid, according to numerous officials, because of Governor Haley Barbour’s cozy relationship with then-President George W. Bush’s administration.

In a particularly damning moment, these allegations are mixed in with footage of Barbour’s speech where he praises his state’s recovery effort by saying, “Our people aren’t whining or moping around, they’re not into victimhood.” There’s also a section featuring one of the popular scapegoats of the Katrina story, then FEMA-head Michael Brown; as the infamous “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job” clip is revisited, Brown says, “If you’ll look closely at that clip,” he says, “you’ll see me wince,” as tries to recast himself as another victim of the bureaucratic incompetency that only exacerbated the situation.

But, though Lee reaches wide to make these far-flung connections, his primary focus always returns back to the devastated heart of the city and the interlocking problems: Jukali gives us a walking tour through the gentrified neighborhood-to-be being built where the St. Bernard Parish once stood, likening it to a supermodel (“it’s anorexic, and probably full of drugs”) and noting the use of cheaper immigrant labor for the project instead of hiring local workers.

And with the new housing come higher rental prices, and economic opportunism: we see footage of the contentious New Orleans City Council meeting where some residents were locked out and others got into skirmishes with police as the council unanimously votes to demolish the city’s public housing. And with the lack of housing came the FEMA trailers that were revealed to be toxic to residents.

And these health problems dovetail with the lack of adequate medical facilities, and the fight to save Charity Hospital from being turned from a dedicated public-service hospital with a track record of addressing victims of mental trauma to a “private-public venture” which would require the destruction of longtime residences to even be built. The series’ first installment closes with a chilling story to underscore the damage done by the lack of resources for the city’s mentally ill: the killing of police officer Nicola Cotton by a former Charity patient who, after it was closed, was shuffled around different facilities without an effective treatment plan. When the credits hit and images of the Saints’ celebration return to the screen, the juxtaposition is as unnerving as it is effective.

On Sunday, I attended a Digital Capital Week event called Latinos, Technology, and the Environment, hosted by my friend Kety Esquivel.

The panel description states:

According to a Sierra Club National Survey, 66% of Latino(a)s in the United States, work and live close to toxic sites, add to that, the African Americans and Asians that live in highly polluted urban neighborhoods, the farmer migrants that are exposed to pesticides when picking US food and the Indigenous peoples that are having their lands mined and degraded and we have a big hot mess that makes the US majority generally and environmentally disadvantaged. This panel will examine the opportunity presented by the digital sphere as it relates to Latinos and the environment. We will discuss our participation in the recent World’s People Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia as well as the next annual meeting of environmental ministers in Cancun in November.

However, when the assembled group (Angela, Kety, Mike, and Rich) started talking, some new questions emerged: how are environmental issues being covered, and how do nonwhites (and other marginalized voices) factor into these conversations?

Personally, I love Twitter, because it provides me with instant feedback when I am thinking through a problem. So, while in the session, I sent out a question:

Just curious – readers, how invested are you in environmental issues?

The responses were about what I expected:

zenufar @racialicious very. environmental rights & human rights = one and the same. stories: access to land, food sovereignty, indigenous rights… 3:06 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious @racialicious cont. migration from rural to urban areas and resulting human settlements, recent land grabs in sub-saharan africa & water. 3:08 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

KetyE

@Racialicious says she thinks there is an opp in how #SM is harnessed in the #ClimateJustice space #latism #p2 #gov20 #latinos #environment 2:59 PM Jun 13th via UberTwitter

LudovicSpeaks

@racialicious many POC perceive & call enviro issues economic, health and community, so kinda crowds on what you call it and what ya mean 2:41 PM Jun 13th via Echofon in reply to racialicious

LudovicSpeaks

@racialicious oh yeah, soverignty too 2:42 PM Jun 13th via Echofon in reply to racialicious

progresscholar

@racialicious Just curious – readers, how invested are you in environmental issues?//Very. Env. issues intersect with race in many ways. 2:37 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

arieswym

@racialicious I’m developing a growing investment in environmental issues 2:33 PM Jun 13th via TweetDeck in reply to racialicious
reetamac

@racialicious very. 2:30 PM Jun 13th via UberTwitter in reply to racialicious
sassycrass

@racialicious Moderately invested, I guess. I recycle and compost kinda…um…*scratches head* 2:30 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

eyesshaa

@racialicious on a day like today where i got spat on by a man for daring an opinion it takes a backseat to race & gender issues.

KJenNu

@racialicious somewhat. will use cloth grocery bag, buy local, but not seriously considering buying hybrid for next car. 2:26 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

Phoenix_Noire

@racialicious very. Environmental rights are human rights [autonomy, land + water rights, indigenous rights, etc]

SarangaComics

@racialicious When I first heard about the oil spill in april I nearly cried. I am very invested in green issues. Sun Jun 13 16:39:35 2010 via web in reply to racialicious

Yet, for some reason, there is an idea within predominantly white environmental circles that minorities don’t care about green issues.  I had this argument a few times myself, when I worked with an eco-focused organization.  It isn’t that POCs are not interested – its that many of us do not have the luxury to be single issue. (The Vegans of Color tagline really just keeps on giving.) And, as many of the responders pointed out above, environmental issues intersect with many different aspects of social justice. As I used to say often at the org, it isn’t that POC/poor folks don’t care, there are just other pressing matters that ALSO need consideration. (And some of the racism/classim in the eco justice movement isn’t helping.)

From there, those of us at the panel started to discuss what types of messages would inspire people to become more engaged around eco-justice. One of the things I had noticed is that going green turns some people off because the idea of greening is associated with purchasing and consumption ($18 sigg bottles, organic food) and not reducing resources. So, we wondered a little about the framing of issues. I asked:

Thanks for the responses! Next Q: What types of stories/campaigns make you want to get eco-active? For example – would you rather read about the impact of BP on the wetlands or the impact on BP workers and communities? Or both?

And again, most folks discussed their desire to see a variety of perspectives:

janniaragon

@racialicious Both! Sun Jun 13 18:21:11 2010 via Echofon in reply to racialicious

thecurvature

@racialicious Both. Sun Jun 13 16:53:14 2010 via Echofon in reply to racialicious

Chrysaora

@racialicious No!!! Especially not after the initial burst of news coverage. Long-term coverage of community impacts would be great! Sun Jun 13 16:46:09 2010 via Echofon in reply to racialicious

sejw

@racialicious Both, since the two are intertwined. Sun Jun 13 16:43:32 2010 via Twitterrific in reply to racialicious


reetamac

@racialicious both. Because anything less doesn’t represent the full extent of the devastation and costs. Sun Jun 13 16:35:45 2010 via UberTwitter in reply to racialicious
chefsgf

@racialicious Both, personally. Think I’m hearing the least about the workers though. Sun Jun 13 16:21:44 2010 via Echofon in reply to racialicious

CruelSecretary

@racialicious Both. Sun Jun 13 16:20:15 2010 via web in reply to racialicious
mesteena

@racialicious always the workers and communities #peoplecomefirst Sun Jun 13 16:18:59 2010 via UberTwitter in reply to racialicious

EEKALYNX

@racialicious I’d like to read about both. 3:17 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

bkmasala

@racialicious workers and communities…maybe both. way more interested in the environmental impact on people, especially since usually poor 3:14 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

mezz98

@racialicious JMO, but I would rather read about both. 3:13 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

zenufar

@racialicious both. 3:11 PM Jun 13th via web in reply to racialicious

Kety and Angela shared a lot of stories from the Cochabamba Climate Sumit, specifically around indigenous issues raised within the summit and how indigenous knowledge (historical and present) was often discounted in discussions of the environment.  We talked a bit about eco-authority, and I wondered:

@ketyE is talking about how the world climate initatives discussed indigenous communities – how do we demand more coverage? Is there enough information/coverage coming from indigenous communities about eco justice?

HonoreeJeffers

@racialicious Re: your question abt is there enough info from indigenous communities on eco justice—–no. There’s actually not PUBLICIZED info on eco justice from “diverse” communities, period. I shld say ENOUGH publicized info. There’s info, alright but–ahem–”non-diverse” reps have highjacked eco justice discussion. Sun Jun 13 17:50:44 2010 via web

Complex_Smplcty

@racialicious I don’t believe there is. But there’s also the fact that many communities don’t know about it either. Sun Jun 13 16:38:25 2010 via UberTwitter in reply to racialicious

Most of us left the panel determined to find a way to reframe the information so that (1) more eco-info makes it into niche media and (2) more diverse voices were included in mainstream conversations.

Any ideas, readers?

Lately I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with the hipsters and hippies, as well as the hippie/hipster “culture” at large, and have become increasingly annoyed at their depiction/co-option of my ethnicity as a First Nations person.

Kelsey pointed me to this post on Sociological Images last week which rounds up some of the latest and greatest of this ever continuing trend.

I know my parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles have had to deal with this in their time and it’s certainly not a new thing –but it’s 2010 and not only does it still continue strongly to this day – it’s taken some interesting turns down the erasure of true origins road. This isn’t a hate letter, or reverse racism (as if there were such a thing!). It’s also not an attempt to discourage you from finding out more about Native people – and in fact I strongly ENCOURAGE you to do some actual research and knowledge seeking so you might get our culture right and think twice about things like permission and respect before you act on your appropriation.

So to the hipsters/hippies who appropriate Native culture but aren’t First Nations/Aboriginal/Indigenous, I’m asking you nicely now, to PLEASE stop annoying (the fuck out of) me with the following:

The clothing. Whether it’s headbands, feathers, bone necklaces, mukluks, or moccasins – at least put some damn thought into WHAT you are wearing and WHERE it’s from. I know our people sell these things en masse in gift shops and trading posts, and it seems like it’s an open invitation to buy it and flaunt it, but you could at least check the label to see A. If it’s made by actual Indigenous people/communities B. What does this really mean if YOU wear it?

Organic living and environmentalism as “new” concepts. One of my friends jokes that all Native people should get green energy for free because that’s how we’ve been living for centuries and also taught the colonizers how to live (which may or may not have screwed us in the end). I really do love the resurgence of the green movement and how things are becoming more environmentally friendly – but I don’t need certain members of the movement pretending like they started this or ignoring extreme realities we’re facing like environmental racism and justice. I also think we need actual Native people being in charge of and leading the responses to environmental degradation that are happening in our own territories. It’s not to say we don’t need allyship and support – but it’s also rather irritating when I read an event posting for a cause of some sort for a First Nation where there’s like two Native people in the whole place (who either barely say anything or are supposed to go along with the way the hippies organize without complaint because they’re “doing something for us”).

The appropriation of and silence about our medicines and teachings. I see direct examples of this in some of the alternative feminine and menstrual cycle products that are on the market now. I’m not hating on the DIVA cup or suggesting that the “divine goddess” isn’t a great story to hear, but I am wondering where your assertion of Indigenous midwifery knowledge is – and that in fact the absence of acknowledgment of where periods not being a bad thing or the blood from our menstrual cycles being sacred originates, is a direct erasure of Indigenous truth. It’s not enough to romanticize our medicines and teachings about women’s bodies and power and say, “Look at how thousands of years ago they used to do that!” and then capitalize your product or book off of some ancient-seeming fluff you are trying to present as en vogue. No! We are STILL doing this, we STILL believe in this, and damn it, you need to HONOR where this comes from!

We’re all one race. I’m not here to burst your bubble of unity and friendship, those things are great – but I am here to remind you that while some of you want to be our friends and ignore so-called “cultural differences” – you can’t ignore the history and current day presence of colonialism and racism. I don’t need to list off the statistics of health disparities and poverty in Native communities today to prove this fact to you – just consult the facts. I don’t want to be the angry Indian you won’t be friends with, so do me a favor and when you talk about “earth-based” things and your “right” to participate in whatever culture you want because we’re all human, know that there is such a thing as cultural protocol and that many of us are in crisis now of how to protect Indigenous knowledge.

Your grandfather’s, sister’s, cousin’s great-grandma was a Cherokee princess. This is an old one that we’ve been hearing for decades now – but it’s especially bothersome when I’m on the plane and you want me to educate you about blood quantum systems and status for the next 2 hours of the flight. I won’t do this, and I’m tired of you getting upset at me if I don’t initially present myself as Native (because no, we don’t all have braids and brown skin) but then you look at my laptop stickers and are like, “Mohawk. Hey my third cousin’s sister’s best friend is Native!” and then I just turn the volume on my IPod louder because I don’t always have the answers to your incessant questions – which are really just one question to me – why are we so invisible to you?

–

Image by Jenn Mussari, featured at the Native Appropriations Blog

For a review of Part 1, click here

No way around it: Latino In America was a failure.

At the very least, Thursday’s conclusion, “Chasing The Dream,” seemed equal parts melodrama and bait-and-switch, with the broadcast component weakened by a lack of questions that undercut even its’ more compelling segments.

For instance, in the report on the murder of Luis Mendoza, we got an overview of events in Shenandoah, Penn., leading up to the crime, and of the area’s history with several immigrant populations, but when one individual reported he felt he was being intimidated because of his speaking to CNN, we got no follow-up with local authorities. When it was mentioned that one of the four defendants – who were acquitted of hate-crime accusations – testified the cops told them to get their stories straight, we got no follow-up.

In another major mis-step, the incident was not placed in any sort of context – at least on-air. You had to venture to the series’ website (or look it up yourself) to get this kind of information:

FBI statistics show that anti-Latino crimes are on the rise. There were 595 anti-Latino crimes in 2007, up almost 40 percent from the 426 crimes in 2003; the Latino population in America grew only 14 percent during that time.
In December, Ecuadorean Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhañay died after he was beaten with a baseball bat in Brooklyn, New York.
One month earlier, a group of seven teenagers with a history of harassing Latinos went out looking for “Mexicans to f— up” and fatally stabbed Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue, New York.
FBI figures from 2007 show that anti-Latino attacks account for about 8 percent of all hate crimes. About 35 percent of hate crimes were directed at blacks, 16 percent at homosexuals and 13 percent at Jews.
But experts say hate crimes in general are underreported. States are not required to report those figures to the FBI.

Surely including at least some of this information would have been a better use of our viewing time than Soledad O’Brien amiably chatting up the guy starting up his own “Save Shenandoah” group.

A similar lack of layering plagued the story of “Marta,” the undocumented immigrant who came to the U.S. To find her mother, only to find herself having to accuse her mom of neglect in order to stay in America. Marta’s story is woven with that of the Cuban “Pedro Pans,” which include Sen. Mel Martínez (R-FL). Never mind that Marta (pictured above) isn’t even Cuban. But, again, you had to go to the website to get more relevant information:

[Marta's] case is typical of the 7,211 children known to have entered the United States illegally in 2008 by themselves, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which runs the shelters where the children are detained. Children come searching for family members or a way out of poverty with little understanding of the legal ramifications they face.

And how does Martínez feel about a system that forces children to seek their own legal representation in these matters? Well, you had to watch Anderson Cooper to figure it out, I guess, because O’Brien seemingly never asked.

Other segments just seemed disjointed: the segment on Pico Rivera veered from covering its’ evolution into a “Latino Mayberry” (a rather condescending term) to a law enforcement crackdown against gang and tagging activity to the city’s Scared Straight-esque P.R.I.D.E program to following yet another at-risk teen trying to navigate through it. And in the middle of all this, seemingly staple-gunned onto the narrative, was a visit with a local car club. And all this was before we learned that the city’s otherwise sympathetic mayor, Gracie Gallegos, had to resign for allegedly cashing bad checks. What, exactly, was the lesson to be learned from this? There wasn’t even an online companion to this story to look to for an overall point.

The series’ final segment seemed to focus on the financial disadvantage of a naturalized immigrant who doesn’t speak English; not only would his story have fit in more tightly among those featured in “The Garcías,” but it was shoe-horned against an Anglo baseball instructor who successfully boosts his camp’s enrollments by hiring and recruiting Latino staff and students; and a very successful immigrant couple. In the end we learn that the guy’s girlfriend is pregnant and he failed his Sheriff Department entrance exam again.

And that’s where the series wraps up. Is this how the network wants to attract more Latino viewership? Based on these utterly depressing four hours, I can just imagine the slogan: CNN: ¡No se puede!

Soledad O’Brien says she wants Latino In America to “start a conversation.” Unfortunately for viewers, the series’ message seems to be, what? Woe is us? Abandon ship? What did Brown ever do to you?

Grounded in depressing case studies and missed questions, the series’ first installment was less “Latinos In America” and more like “Latinos For Lou Dobbs’ Audience.” Most of the people featured were not “changing” their communities – they were being victimized in or by them. They were pregnant, suicidal (or pregnant and suicidal), caught in an immigration raid, losing their cultural roots, facing an uphill job struggle or isolated in their churches. The premiere’s first profile, of Univision TV chef Lorena García, was the only one that focused on somebody doing something positive – in her case, building her own brand in spite of skepticism over her “accent.”

Most of the rest of the Garcías profiled – a disparate group “united” by having the 8th most popular surname in the U.S.; take that, Velazcos! – were, to put it mildly, in very bad places in their lives. And more damning from a journalistic perspective, we never got to see O’Brien ask crucial follow-up questions: how responsible does Cindy García’s mother feel for her inability/unwillingness to learn English obstructing Cindy’s studies? How did Cindy (pictured above) figure unprotected sex was a sensible idea in the face of a 70% failure-to-graduate rate and a sister who was also a teen mother? And what in the blue hell was her boyfriend thinking having sex without a condom?

Similar questions came to mind in the feature on Araceli Torres, the young woman facing impending deportation despite living here more than two decades. Was there something preventing her from seeking citizenship once she turned 18 years old, or was her story nothing more than an excuse for CNN to hype the grand-standing Anderson Cooper, who saw fit to follow the show by giving a platform to anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The feature on Latinos in Hollywood was also clumsy: sure, it’s sad to see Lupe Ontiveros still doing the (NSFW) Hollywood Shuffle after 30 years, but Eva Longoria-Parker’s blithe dismissal of the issue (Latinos need to get behind the camera? Thanks, CNN, for the breaking news) didn’t help the segment as much as, say, asking Screen Actors’ Guild president Ken Howard how he feels about his POC members working in an industry bent on excluding them would have.

O’Brien’s best moment came during the feature on the St. Louis church struggling to integrate an increasingly Spanish-speaking membership into its’ ranks, when she got both the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking factions to admit neither will hang out with the other. That acknowledgement boosted the segment’s finale, with members from each community awkwardly attempting to communicate at a church fundraiser – and made the earlier omissions all the more glaring.

In fact, the most compelling discussion of the “Latino condition” of the evening wasn’t even part of the documentary: on Campbell Brown, John Leguizamo told L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigoza that visiting Los Angeles felt “like traveling into South Africa,” leading to this exchange:

Villarigoza: We have the biggest Latino middle class in America. We have the biggest Black middle class in America.
Leguizamo: Where are they?

Unfortunately, their face-off was cut short. Part 2 of Latino airs tonight, and as it moves to cover the murder of Luis Ramírez, you have to wonder: will it acknowledge not just anti-Latino and anti-immigrant sentiment on American airwaves, but on its’ own network?

Recommended: Brown Is The New Green

Over the weekend, I received the following email from Green For All:

Late last night, Van Jones resigned from his position with the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Many of us are left with pain and anger after seeing a leader of integrity, vision, and commitment targeted by hateful personal attacks. Van stepped down in service to our movement. He felt that fighting the attacks would draw attention to him and detract from our mission.

Now, our challenge is to turn our disappointment and anger into action and renewed resolve for our common goals.

Like the great social justice movements of the 20th century, our movement for an inclusive green economy is based in the most fundamental American values: equality, justice, and opportunity for all.

That’s why our opponents reduced the debate to fear, hatred, and division. They cannot win a debate about values. They cannot win a debate about solutions.

Our allies and friends may be redirected by these attacks, and focus on the rants of those who fear our vision. For Green For All, our struggle must be defined by the issues our opponents refuse to debate: ending global warming; lifting people out of poverty; restoring the economy; and bringing health to our communities. These are the challenges that matter the most.

Parnee over at Gawker has a good summary on why Jones was singled out:

[F]or both his activism and his charm he was rewarded with a White House job with the Council on Environmental Quality. He was tasked with making sure stimulus money for green jobs actually went to green jobs. And he’s a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he’s beholden to is poor people. He is the sort of person we were all praying Obama would bring with him to DC, instead of Larry Summers.

And that is one of the reasons he is now being ritually and savagely demonized.

To understand why and how he’s being demonized, we have to look at the way information and misinformation makes it way from crazy blogs to crazy pundits to crazy citizens to, suddenly, the non-crazy regular media.

The “why” is simple: he is a genuine left-wing liberal with a White House job. He is black. He used to be radical, and probably still has radical sympathies (you know, caring about poor black people and all that). He is, in other words, fucking terrifying, if you frame his story right.

Parnee goes on to explain that Van Jones’ platform isn’t even being considered by his opponents. It’s all about his past – and specifically, as a Communist addition to Obama’s cabinet. (Which I am sure Jones found an interesting charge as he was clear about being a Marxist.) It was a blatant political play, and Jones stepped down.

This saddens me for many reasons, but most notably for the fact that someone with a good vision, a commitment to ending poverty, and ideas on how to shift environmentalism away from consumption and toward community based initiatives was targeted specifically to score points against Obama. It’s disgusting.

In Jones’ own words:

“I didn’t start out as an environmentalist. I started out helping urban kids in trouble and I burned out, going to way too many funerals and court cases that turned out badly,” Jones said in an interview. “I was just trying to get my own health back.”

“I went to these retreat Centers in Marin County, and it was a different world. They had all this organic food and solar panels and hybrid cars, and I was like — why don’t they have this in my neighborhood?” Jones said. “I thought, if we had these kind of jobs and services in Oakland, we’d probably have less violence. So I came up with a slogan: Green jobs, not jails.”

In this month’s Marie Claire, Cameron Diaz is gracing the cover and bringing a message. The popular starlet has embraced the environment as her new motivation, and is doing a low budget movie/documentary about the state of our fair planet.

The reporter follows Diaz to her old neighborhood in Long Beach, California, noting that her town is “dominated by a behemoth polluter.” Cameron’s childhood memories are tinged with flames from the nearby refinery, the dust that was ever present, and the childhood asthma she experienced.

However, she seems singularly focused on how individuals impact their environment:

Once she has eased people past the shock of encountering her (“Hi, I’m Cameron!”), she drops into a low, wide-leg stance so she’s eye-to-eye with her less willowy interviewees – high school girls, the Latino father of a young boy, a science teacher – then launches into a series of questions while the cameras roll: Do you know where your food, your water come from? Do you worry about the environment? What would it take for you to become more involved? And while people do seem to care, they also indicate a feeling of powerlessness. What, after all, can one person do? Then there is the problem of illegal immigrants – and there are many in this area – being decidedly disinclined to draw attention to themselves by registering complaints about air quality.

But the showstopper is a woman we meet a bit later who lives in a little house in full view of the refinery, who tells Diaz about the morning a sulfur-holding tank at the plant exploded, the still mysterious condition that led to her young son’s open heart surgery, the spike in depression and suicides in the neighborhood, the six-figure payoff one family received when their son was diagnosed with leukemia…

And yet, with unmistakable pride, the woman turns around and lifts her shirt to show us the name of the neighborhood tattooed in large black Gothic letters across the small of her back. Because this, despite everything, is home.

Diaz’s next statement was frustratingly familiar to me as an anti-racist who also has a deep eco-streak. After listing through dozens of environmental slights coming from a corporation and understanding why many residents would not want to call attention to themselves, she still goes on to say:

“I want to leave you with this thought,” Diaz says to the woman. After all you’ve told me…what would it take for you to do something to change your environment?” The woman, speechless, looks like she’s going to cry.

One of my longstanding issues with the green movement is how it does not really engage with communities of color. The issues described are often perpetuated and controlled by corporate interests, and yet the onus is put squarely on the individual. Sometimes, the state contributes to the sorry state of affairs. This is what we mean with the term environmental racism.

Racewire recently put up a blog post titled “To Breathe Free,” detailing the struggles with asthma in New York City that are related to race and class:

One New York advocacy group is putting a spotlight on kids today who struggle to overcome the odds just to breathe. In a report on housing conditions and asthma, Make the Road New York says families of color are made more vulnerable to asthma by suffocatingly substandard housing conditions—apartments marred with crumbling walls, roaches, and moldy air. City health authorities have reported epidemic asthma rates in adults and children, with clear links to race. As the leading cause of school absence and hospitalization for children 14 years and younger, the illness aggravates a multitude of other economic and educational hardships in Black and Latino neighborhoods.

The report reflects the findings of an in-depth 2008 study linking asthma not only to race and ethnicity, but also to poor housing conditions and living environments. The community’s “cohesion” makes a difference as well: fears about being out on the street may force parents to keep their children in the house, exposing them to internal threats instead.

The other problem with dropping the onus on the individual is that many people in the contemporary green movement have adopted the environment as their flagship issue. What they do not realizing that many of us do care about the Earth – but it isn’t the most pressing issue on our own personal lists.

In contrast, take Kerry Washington’s video about the importance of environmental awareness and personal responsibility:

While Washington also goes for the personal responsibility angle, she places it on the shoulders of those who are already agitating for change. She encourages viewers not to forget that just because your neighborhood is free of pollution, an area two miles away may still be struggling with the same issue. As she says in the video “we need to be thinking about other neighborhoods too [...] people need to remember that local can be the other side of the tracks, or the other side of the freeway. That’s still your community.”

Word. I can understand Diaz’s message and her passion, but the method feels like more of the same. Yes, we can all do better in a pursuit of a greener world – but we shouldn’t lose sight of the mega-polluters who find shelter for their crimes in communities that are ill equipped to fight back.

In order to move forward the conversation about the environment, we will need to start looking at the whole issue, not just mainstream friendly pieces. And then, we can truly start down the path to eco-justice.

Editor’s Note: I watched the Quantum of Solace the weekend it opened. This is not unusual for me, as I watch all the Bond films and like them all for different reasons. However, I wasn’t planning to write specifically on Bond until longtime reader Ansel (now of the Mediahacker blog) sent his review of the film for consideration. I enjoyed the review, especially as it touched on a matter of great importance in our current times: the effect of globalization on communities of color. And so, I am using Ansel’s review as a jumping off point for larger discussions about global politics and policy, now found using the “globalization” tab. The first of the series will go live tomorrow – until then, enjoy. – LDP

*Spoiler Alert*

James Bond, 007. For decades the British super-spy’s name stood for deadly charisma, over-the-top international espionage, and fancy gadgets – until the series took a more realist approach two years ago when actor Daniel Craig took over the role from Pierce Brosnan. The critics hailed Craig’s turn in “Casino Royale” for his icy cool and the physical presence he brought to new, grittier action sequences. This was finally a Bond for the new century, they said.

From an anti-kyriarchy point-of-view, I think Quantum of Solace better fits that description. Casino Royale’s plot was based on Ian Fleming’s original Bond novel about a corrupt financial magnate. The story took place mostly in Europe and turned on a high-stakes poker match played by ultra-rich elites.

With Solace, all the familiar elements are still there – the frenetic action, expensive cars, the constant tension between Bond and M, his boss at MI6, played by Judi Dench. As in every other Bond movie, most women in the film look like supermodels and are used or controlled by men, whether by force or by Bond’s charm. He sleeps with one of them in this movie, slightly down from absurd average of 2.5 women per film.

But James Bond fighting to protect the water supply for impoverished indigenous Bolivian villages? From a wealthy villain who poses as the head of an eco-friendly company called “Greene Planet” and conspires with U.S. intelligence to overthrow a leftist president? Now there’s something new and timely.

Bond’s vengeful pursuit of the killer of his love-interest from previous film takes him early on to Haiti. Just before embarking on an explosive boat escape in the docks of Port-Au-Prince, Bond observes Dominic Greene, the creepy and ruthless businessman brilliantly played by Mathieu Amalric, in a candid exchange with a general who aspires to dictatorship.

General Medrano: And you can do all this for me?

Greene: Well, look at what we did to this country. The Haitians elect a priest who decides to raise the minimum wage from 38 cents to 1 dollar a day. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to upset the corporations who were here making t-shirts and running shoes. So they called us. We facilitated a change.

This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the real story of the U.S.-backed coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the twice-elected President of Haiti, has been acknowledged in the mass media. While a few solitary investigative journalists have written books or produced documentaries about the coup, the major U.S. news media dutifully covered up or ignored the story. Leave it to this latest Bond film, of all things, to help counter the propaganda about Haiti as the country continues to suffer from years of abuse at the hands of neo-colonial powers.

Bond infiltrates, drives, flies, and shoots his way through the rest of the movie trying to stop another coup from taking place in Bolivia, where Greene wants to privatize the water rights in collaboration with the U.S. government by re-establishing a friendly military junta there. The Washington Post’s critic derides all this as “a ludicrous environmental cautionary tale about corporate control of water.”

Tell that to Bolivians, whose water rights were privatized by the World Bank in 1997. In what some called a “water war,” Bechtel was chased out of the country as Bolivians took to the streets in mass opposition to the company’s high prices for basic water services. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president, now plans to enshrine a right to water in the constitution. Indeed, the indigenous Bolivians depicted as demure victims in the film have proven in the real world that they don’t require the violent heroics of a rich white guy like Bond to organize and take back their own country.

Along the way Bond is helped by the movie’s sole independent person-of-color of any significance to the story, the black C.I.A. agent Felix Leiter played by Jeffrey Wright. He defies his boss and opposes the coup in Bolivia. His now-second appearance in the Bond series, along with the election of Barack Obama, has spurred talk of Jamie Fox, P. Diddy (really, Diddy?), or some other actor (what about Denzel?) becoming the first Black Bond in the near future.

“Quantum of Solace” is a fine blockbuster film (it’s grossed some $454 million worldwide) with some amazing action sequences. It has all the requisite elements of your standard Bond film, with the unfortunate exception of spiffy high-tech gadgets. A general failure to portray women and people of color as unique individuals, much less agents of their own destiny is par for the course for the Bond series. A story that questions “greenwashing” and calls attention to U.S. complicity in imposing neoliberalism on the two poorest countries in the hemisphere certainly is not. And it’s a welcome departure from the simplistic man-saves-world-from-brown-skinned-terrorists thread that’s all too common in action films these days.

Much of what people know about historic Native issues has to do with land on some level. Indeed, much of what we are about today has to do with our land also. Our Mother Earth is the ultimate living entity, something that sustains life and guides us as a people. They say that without our land, we are nothing.

Nowadays, the news that is frequently dispelled from our communities if you are involved in any left-learning circles are about things like land claims, environmental degradation and destruction, and the suffering and plight of our people as a result of our Mother Earth being taken away from us. While this is all true and essential to acknowledge that we need land for the people, we also need people for the land. I know for myself that whenever I enter an activist space of some sort, I’m constantly being asked about whatever land struggle that is currently going on in some Native community, to which I’ll often reply “I work in sexual and reproductive health. Do you know the latest statistic on AIDS in Aboriginal communities?”

People ask me this I think for maybe a few stereotypical reasons (like they think that we all know everything about each other and send smoke signals the other way to find out), but mostly because it would appear that these are very key issues for us to be involved in, and in reality, we do need this place for the prophecies of our next 7 generations to come true. While I am still a learner when it comes to subjects like environmental justice and food sustainability, I know I cannot separate myself from my community whatsoever, and these are the simultaneous realities we must deal with when even discussing things like sexuality and violence prevention in our communities. I have to be informed.

We cannot pit one issue on top of the other as being more pressing; it’s all affecting us somehow.

Even my own heroine of heroines, Katsi Cook, from my home community of Akwesasne, a leader in reproductive justice and traditional midwifery, starting the Mother’s Milk Project and the first Haudenosaunee Birthing Centre at Six Nations, is now an internationally renowned environmental activist, who (among many of the other corporate squalors she has exposed in her time) had to simultaneously bring light to the fact that PCBs from the General Motors plant were getting into our fish and waters and gravely affecting the women and the way they birthed babies in my community. This is how I know that as a young First Nations woman, I have to care about all of this at the same time and don’t have the luxury of just picking one sector to be vocal on. I wouldn’t want to anyways.

Interestingly enough however, when it comes to understanding the 7 generations teaching, it’s important to remember that we are actually on number 7 right now. This generation and the people my age and younger are supposed to be the catalysts to effect concrete, positive change and send ripples of transformation throughout our nations to be stronger, better, and to live longer. Ironically when it comes to looking at what is going on with youth across our lands, we are certainly failing them the most.

For example in the US:

• Native American youth represent just over 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet they constitute 2 to 3 percent of the youth arrested for such offenses as larceny-theft and liquor law violations..
• Alcohol-related deaths among Native Americans ages 15-24 are 17 times higher than the national averages. The suicide rate for Native American youth is three times the national average.
• Over 30% of Native American youth do not graduate from high school

And in Canada:

• More than 27 000 First Nations children are in state care
• Aboriginal youth ages 15-24 have the highest rate of sexually transmitted infections in the country
• 40% of Aboriginal youth live in poverty

I won’t even go into how much youth-focused programming and youth-led initiatives are lacking across the board. This isn’t only due to funding and racist constraints from government; this has to do with a lot of older people still not getting it that it has to be about the youth now. You need to give up some of your power and privilege for the next generations to continue on the important work you think you are doing.

But fortunately all around me, I have the privilege of witnessing youth who choose a different path to make both land, social, and health issues a priority for themselves to do something about. They are breaking the cycles of marginalization and standing new ground on their own that is all-encompassing, which is really old ground since they’re being traditional in doing so, and proud of it. And the youth from the Swinomish Tribe who recently starred in the amazing “Match Point” documentary are no exception.

I had the honour of watching Match Point during the Youth Program at imagineNATIVE in Toronto this year, and it aired on PBS’s Independent Lens this past week.

From the imagineNATIVE Voices of Tomorrow film description:

For centuries the Swinomish people have relied on fishing and clamming as a way of life. However, the nearby presence of two large oil refineries has threatened this age-old tradition, negatively affecting the water, land, and overall health of the community. Told through the eyes of three teenage boys, who use humour and candidness to confront the politicians behind the scene, they travel to Washington to make a move about the environmental destruction facing their community. As the boys experience a need to tell their story, they produce an incredibly empowering and youthful coming of age story.

Produced by one of my favourite media companies in the world, Longhouse Media, this was a project of theirs called Native Lens, and it allowed the three young friends to be active together in something after attending drug rehab treatment. I totally relate to their initial groans on “But it HAS to be about the environment?” but in the end, it wasn’t really about the “environment” so much as it was about their culture and survival of their community, which related to every single item going on in their lives, in some capacity. Being green isn’t a new thing for us, it’s who we’ve always been, and where we need to go back to. March Point is a highly effective tool to teach audiences young and old the strength of the youth voice and how important it is to hear, since if there is no one to carry any of this on, what are we’re really all fighting for?

This past summer my partner and I embarked on doing a traditional diet for one week, where we only ate the foods grown on our own territories, in the old way (so yes, that meant no electricity). This came after many-a-late-night conversation on the importance of our culture, how fed up we are about the destruction on Mother Earth, and we decided that if we are going to continue to complain we have to actively do something about it we haven’t done before. We blogged about it here, and it taught us not only about the colonization of foods and the severe impacts to our people, but about being full just from the land, and all that it really means for us as youth who need to continue on for our Nations, both spiritually and physically.

It is my hope to continue to write and learn about these issues on environmental justice and food sustainability in my community, and share with you along the way. But in the meantime I’ll remind myself that I’m not just an Indigenous feminist reproductive justice freedom fighter. I’m Native, and it’s my inherent duty to care about the earth, in every way that I can.