Sourced: Elias Serna <esern002@UCR.
EDU>
Excellent reminder of, revisit to Tucson, why it's so important today. Gracias Rudy.
Today - after "the seagull/LA met the eagle/Tucson", the Raza Studies conferences 2012-2016 (I helped
organize), the emergence of Ethnic Studies Now statewide - the ghost of Tucson took possession of
CA/U.S. education politics. Gov. Newsome signed the historic Ethnic STudies high school bill last month.
The flourishing of "Ethnic Studies" is very much due to the fight in Tucson, and its exportation to LA,
Califas and points Southwest. But, like Stewart Hall & Angie Chabram-Dernersesian warned, the spread
of "ethnic studies" proves a great moment of danger (ie. hijacking of movts/programs).
I am one with the Sisyphuses of Tucson. We can roll that ball over our enemies, for the sake of strong
programs to serve students now and in the future. The enemies are so wealthy (and only appear
large/strong) and divide/distract us so effectively. Our focus should be the integrity and innovation of
Chican@ Studies, Raza Studies programs... on building.
May the Fuerza be with us. And like Rudy says, Write On.
Elias
(RSN 2012-2017, flier, RSN banner at 2015 LAUSD mtg, passing Ethnic Studies requirement).
On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 11:28 AM rudy acuna <acunarudy427@gmail.com> wrote:
Control Your Space
It is the message not the wrapping paper
By
Rodolfo F. Acuña
I am often asked what ideology I favor, and what tactics
should Chicanas/os use to achieve equality. If I were living
in the 19th Century I would take the question seriously.
However, while this kind of conjecture is interesting, let’s
face it, we live in another age. Ideologies are ideas to explain
the mess we live in. Since I have a tremendous respect for
the sages of the 19th century, I would not pretend to add to
what they wrote; they are as relevant today as they were
then.
Add to them the descriptions of Charles Dickens in Oliver
Twist of the street children in 1830s London, a phenomenon
brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It seems pretty
clear that the chaos Dickens and the sages sought to explain
and prescribe a cure for was good old greed – even Gordon
Gekko would recognize that.
Greed is nothing new. People have known that usury is
wrong for thousands of years. The ancient Hindus and
Buddhists said it was as did the ancient Greeks that
condemned practice as did the Hebrews and the Prophet
Mohammed. The Catholic Church recognized the dangers
of banking and loaning money at excessive interest. Usury
was against the Natural Law, you could go to hell for it until
the Church decided that it was a mortal sin unless the
Catholic Church loaned the money, which was then done in
the name of God. The only other exceptions were Jews who
the Church fathers decided were going to hell anyway. At
the same time, greed made it okay for the Church to sell
tickets out of purgatory in form of indulgences.
Although greed is still viewed as wrong the world is a much
more complex and people rationalize it. People stake out
beliefs, and justify their greed through appeals to a higher
authority. They say that God gave them that right to be
greedy. God is the final arbiter. Thus God gave nations
land, like “he”, it is always “he”, is a real estate broker. God
thus gives the individual level the right to ignore that other
people’s children work in sweatshops to make toys to give
them to your children at a low price.
Aside from witnessing life, my ideas have been formed from
a variety of sources. As mentioned the sages and my
religious upbringing exposed me to ideas such as
usury. From the scholastics I learned that if something is
true then something that contradicts it cannot be true. It is
just simple logic.
Contemporary readings inform me daily. For instance, I
always enjoyed the cartoonist/playwrite Jules Feiffer. I am a
huge fan of his 1960s satirical play “Little Murderers.” It is
about Alfred, a onetime successful photographer, who has
decided to eliminate people from his photographs and just
film objects. Under trying circumstances he meets Patsy.
Alfred is getting beaten up and mugged but he refuses to
fight back. Patsy sees this and intervenes and the muggers
turn on her and beat her. Alfred just walks away and does
not lift a finger to help her. She breaks away and confronts
Alfred who scolds her, why did she intervene? They would
have stopped when they got tired of hitting him.
Patsy sees this as a challenge. She wants to remake him into
an assertive man who will protect her, and decides to marry
Alfred. She takes Alfred home to meet her family who want
him to be successful. Alfred loves Patsy, but he rejects her
family’s idea that for him to be successful and his life to
have meaning he has to return to photographing people.
Alfred gets angry and says his photographs would have just
as much meaning if filmed excrement.
For Alfred the world is senseless, and he cannot feel
passionate about the senseless urban and world violence, the
senseless killings, prejudices and dysfunctional families.
Alfred is contemptuous of society.
Although some have tried to draw parallels between Alfred
and Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus;” they are quite
different.
Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” is about "the absurd." It is
about Sisyphus who is condemned for eternity to roll a rock
up a hill only to make no progress and have the rock roll
back on him. Camus sees a conflict between what we want
from life and the reality (chaos). Thus we can never know
the meaning of life unless we make a leap of faith and place
hopes in a God. We are left with the option of placing our
faith in God or committing suicide. We either accept our
fate and live in a meaningless world or give up. The
conclusion that life is meaningless necessarily leads us to
commit suicide. It can be argued that Sisyphus has resigned
himself to uselessness, and the fact that the gods are
punishing you. You accept your fate and you keep going.
Gordon Gekko is a creature of greed. He says, “The point is,
ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word,
is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts
through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love,
knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind…”
When Gekko in Wall Street II gets out of jail he says,
“Someone reminded me I once said "Greed is good. Now it
seems it's legal. Because everyone is drinking the same Kool
Aid.”
The positivists with their laissez faire philosophy would
have been proud of Gekko; the other materialists would
have seen him as the root of the chaos.
I naturally side with the others – it is greed that causes
inequality and ignorance. Take Arizona. I have found all
three models there: Alfred, Sisyphus and Gekko, although
most of the latter are wannabe Gordon Gekkos.
In Arizona I saw many members of the Mexican American
community react like Alfred who is just tired of the chaos
and drops out of society. For them nothing is going to
change, some went to the service, returned and still there is
street violence, racism and a lack of opportunity. Why fight
it?
Others like Sisyphus choose to place their faith in another
world and keep rolling that rock up the hill and accept its
rolling back on them as their fate. They buy their lottery
tickets and look forward to an afterlife.
In Arizona there are very few Gordon Gekkos just a lot of
wannabes. The real Gekkos include ALEC, the American
Legislative Exchange Council, and the Koch Brothers who
are devoid of any scruples. They don’t care about right or
wrong as long as they make a profit. They know Mexicans
are not the problem but they demonize them anyway to
make a profit. In this way, they can elect their puppets, fill
their prisons, their charter schools, have liberal gun laws,
sell arms to cartels, launder money from their illicit profits
and pay low or no taxes.
They know that Mexicans are not a problem but to make a
profit and get their puppets elected people have to fear
them. Thus they say that the body snatchers are taking their
land. To fill up the prisons and reap hundreds of millions
they target them and round them up like cattle. To steal
public land and control Mexicans they have to keep them
uneducated.
Cadres of wannabe Gekkos toe the line. John Pedicone in
Tucson – previously a school superintendent at a tiny school
district parlayed three years as a superintendent there to
take over the medium sized Tucson Unified School District
at over $300,000 a year. Mark Stegeman, a failed economics
professor who would have a hard time getting tenure at a
California Community College heads up the board of
education. They are willing accomplices.
A great pretender is state Superintendent of Schools John
Huppenthal whose claim to fame is that he authored 200
bills that supposedly improved Arizona Education.
However, Arizona ranks near last in education nationally
fighting it out with Mississippi for the worse. The other is
Tom Horne, a failed lawyer who went bankrupt in 1970,
and received a lifetime trading ban from the Securities and
Exchange Commission. Both these losers resurrected their
careers by race baiting Mexicans, joining the long line of
wannabes.
It is easy to recognize the source of the chaos in Arizona. It
is going to take an awful lot more to bring it under control.
But I believe that everyone has the right to live life to its
fullest and to do this you have to control your space
How do you do it? Part of the reason why I am on Facebook
is to encourage young people to read about the chaos
around them and express ideas -- to define reality. The only
way this can be done is by knowing the truth and defining.
That is why I encourage students to write.
Anyone can write. I got a C in Freshman English at Loyola
University. Well, everyone got a C.
Frank Sullivan was probably the best teacher I ever had. He
told us that C is average and everyone is average so unless
you really messed up you wouldn’t fail. But to do better you
really had to do extraordinary work for an A.
Never called roll class and his classes were always full. The
Jesuits protected him from McCarthy Hearings, Sullivan
was a socialist.
I am convinced that we have to write and write and write
about what is happening in Tucson.
Spread the message; forget about the colons, the semi-
colons, and punctuation that will come with practice. Just
write, everyone is a potential Gabriel Garcia Marquez. We
have to document our struggle and the mendacity of people
that want to condemn us to the ovens of ignorance.
Remember it is the message, not the paper that it is
wrapped in, that is important.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Join LARED-L, the fastest growing Latino/Hispanic Listserv Network in the
country. It's Free and Easy to join. Just fill out the simple form below, and
become part of our Cyber Community: (( La Voz del Pueblo))
http://listserv.cyberlatina.net/SCRIPTS/WA-CYBERL.EXE?SUBED1=lared-l&A=1
Saludes, Felicidades, y Bienvenido/a,
*********************************************************
Welcome to the La Red Latina WWW Network
"LaRed Latina" WWW site: http://www.lared-latina.com
"LARED-L" Discussion Group: http//www.lared-latina.com/subs.html
LRL Internet Seminar: http://lared-latina.com/seminars.html
Roberto Vazquez rcv_5186@aol.com
President, CEO http://www.lared-latina.com/bio.html
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
LRL Internet Seminar Enterprises is a La Red Latina sponsored concern which
is involved in conducting "Internet/WWW" seminars/lectures for High School,
College, and University Latino/Hispanic/Chicano organizations and
associations
from throughout the West Coast, Southwest, Intermountain, Midwest, and
Texas Regions.
For further information check out LRL Internet Seminar Enterprises at:
http://lared-latina.com/seminars.html
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the LARED-L list, click the following link:
http://listserv.cyberlatina.net/scripts/wa-CYBERL.exe?SUBED1=LARED-L&A=1
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Join LARED-L, the fastest growing Latino/Hispanic Listserv Network in the
country. It's Free and Easy to join. Just fill out the simple form below, and
become part of our Cyber Community: (( La Voz del Pueblo))
http://listserv.cyberlatina.net/SCRIPTS/WA-CYBERL.EXE?SUBED1=lared-l&A=1
Saludes, Felicidades, y Bienvenido/a,
*********************************************************
Welcome to the La Red Latina WWW Network
"LaRed Latina" WWW site: http://www.lared-latina.com
"LARED-L" Discussion Group: http//www.lared-latina.com/subs.html
LRL Internet Seminar: http://lared-latina.com/seminars.html
Roberto Vazquez rcv_5186@aol.com
President, CEO http://www.lared-latina.com/bio.html
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
LRL Internet Seminar Enterprises is a La Red Latina sponsored concern which
is involved in conducting "Internet/WWW" seminars/lectures for High School,
College, and University Latino/Hispanic/Chicano organizations and
associations
from throughout the West Coast, Southwest, Intermountain, Midwest, and
Texas Regions.
For further information check out LRL Internet Seminar Enterprises at:
http://lared-latina.com/seminars.html
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the LARED-L list, click the following link:
http://listserv.cyberlatina.net/scripts/wa-CYBERL.exe?SUBED1=LARED-L&A=1
