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TCRP Condemns Anti-Hispanic Slur

TCRP Condemns Anti-Hispanic Slur in Georgetown Car Dealership Advertisement
2nd Major Public Use of Racial Epithet in Williamson County in a Year

The Texas Civil Rights Project has condemned the use of a racial slur in advertising by the Mac Haik Ford Lincoln Mercury dealership in Georgetown.

On September 26, Mac Haik general manager sent out an e-mail ad for luxury air-conditioned seats, with the lead "Tired of the Wet Backs????" The ad caused great consternation in the central Texas Hispanic community.

"It is stunning in this day and age a major business would use a cute flip of such a derogatory term that people historically have used to demean Hispanics," said TCRP Director Jim Harrington. "It is especially insulting to the growing Hispanic communities in Williamson County, and reinforces the negative image the County's political, judicial, and business leadership already has toward the County's minority communities."

"Even though the dealership moved fast to limit damage to its public image and business, the question remains as to how it could so cavalierly use this racist slur -- and the extent to which it is commonly used by community leaders toward Hispanics in Williamson County," said Harrington.

"This is not the first time this has happened in recent times. The Round Rock municipal court bailiff, a former police officer, was fired last year when he used the same derogatory racial phrase during the arraignment of Hispanic high school students, who and been arrested for their part in the nationwide immigration protests," he concluded.

http://www.texascivilrightsproject.org/

another name for next year's vigil

this article not only puts blame on the woman, how dare she even consider abortion,
but seems to justify the murder.
How do we know she claimed this? How do we know it was to make him mad?
The article continues with such victim blaming language:
" But her lie may have pushed him over the edge."

"Investigators believe Zamora, 33, discovered Garcia, 44, was having an affair and confronted him about it at their Pharr apartment late Sunday."


Articles like this are nothing new to this area, it seems every week a man has killed or burned his lover, wife, exwife, girlfriend. Whatever the reason, it seems that she was always asking for it. Whether it be because she was cheating on him, was considering a divorce, was not allowing him to see the kids...It's always the same and never putting the blame and responsibility on the person who took the life.

distance from heart

i was born under the sign of the dragon,
a survivor
not a victim, or a number
to accompany your article.
Not a stat, or a percentage
or data to formulate your scientific opinion.
My definition is not up for debate.

These are the truths-
verbal abuse is Not
freedom of speech.
Sticks and stones
do not apply
in adult conversations
and how simple minded to tell me
it would apply
in such a situation,
that words carry no weight
and words are just empty.
What position have you been in
and what scars do I have to show
to make you go away with
your fucked up ideas
on what is not
abuse
and what is not
abuse by your
definitions
if bruises show up
on skin
to what degree
do you weigh them?
Do you measure width, tone?
Distance from heart?
Sit there and tell me what
abuse is and what
abuse is not
and all I can do
is not leap up
at your words
and strike
with what you believe is
the only form of abuse,
my fists.


Maybe it's a defense
mechanism
because you see
yourself behind
the mask,
flinging words
at your lovers
and it was not abuse,
no it was empty.
It was not meant
to hurt, no
it was empty.
but I am not trying
to get inside your
head, it was
never my intention
to empathize with
abusers.
And another thing,
defender of free speech man,
 why must
we chant, like children
"sticks and stones"
why not say mantras
like that
are not needed in
exchanges between
lovers.
See it's clear to me
what the definition of
abuse is,
it's clear to me
when words are meant to hurt
it's clear to me,
what side of the table
you sit.

Words leave scars
that your pri-vile-ged
self can't realize,
or see
or understand.
and words can carve
out niches in hearts
and thighs
and words
are daggers
meant to kill,
caress lightly &
leave imprints
reminders,
repetitious,
don't always form
calluses.
I leave you to
live in your
free speech state
with your rose-colored
glasses,
born under
the perfect son.

a moment of silence

A MOMENT OF SILENCE BEFORE I START THIS POEM

Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US

And if I could just add one more thing...

A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,

Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war .... ssssshhhhh.... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.

An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...

For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written. And if this is a 9/11 poem, then: This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971. This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977. This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.

This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.

This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored. This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell, And pay the workers for wages lost. Tear down the liquor stores, The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all... Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing... For our dead.

EMMANUEL ORTIZ, 11 Sep 2002

--

Chicanas on poetry

A Chicana trying to find a mentor is like sand blowing in the wind.

via here: http://sherylluna.blogspot.com/