HTI Open Plaza

In this episode of OP Talks, sociologist Rev. Dr. Tony Lin talks to New York Times National Correspondent Edgar Sandoval about his start in journalism, writing about Texas, and the nuances of the U.S. Latino experience. In particular, Sandoval discusses his experience of reporting on the mass shooting that occurred on May 24, 2022 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Sandoval was born in California and spent part of his childhood in his parents' Mexican home state of Zacatecas, before settling in South Texas. While still in college, Sandoval got his start in journalism at The McAllen Monitor, his hometown newspaper, where his first job was writing obituaries. After graduation, he worked newsroom jobs that took him to California, Pennsylvania, Florida, and New York. He spent almost three years writing about the assimilation of Latino immigrants in Pennsylvania; the articles are anthologized in The New Face of Small-Town America: Snapshots of Latino Life in Allentown, Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), which captures "vivid portraits of the people and families behind the demographic statistics."

In New York, Sandoval worked for the New York Daily News for a decade before joining The New York Times in 2019, where he is now a National Correspondent based in Texas. Coming full circle, he currently writes about South Texas people and places for the NYT’s National Desk.

In this episode of OP Talks, Emanuel Padilla talks to T.I. Frazier about growing up with parents who were pastors, writing for children, and about his most recent book, Faith Arising (Timothy Frazier, 2022), which charts his journey of discovery and explores Christian teachings. The book invites readers “to critically examine key moments in your life where you felt lost, heartbroken, inspired, challenged, courageous, overwhelmed, and at peace.” His devotional Faith Growth Stages is forthcoming in 2023.

Born on the East Coast and partly raised in Southern California, Frazier served ten years with the United States Army National Guard in various roles, including Chaplain Assistant. “As a Boricua, but also African-American, we’re storytellers. And being able to share our story is a way of sharing our legacy. Why we do what we do,” says Frazier, who is the proud father of a three-year-old and also the author of the children’s book Lauren the Cow (Timothy Frazier, 2022). “The stories, lessons learned,” he tells Padilla, “they're really stories about our faith, and the more we can share our journey— and being honest about it, even in the places that are difficult—it becomes an adventure that others can learn from.”

In this episode of OP Talks, Rev. Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin talks to celebrated author Sandra Cisneros about her new poetry collection 'Woman Without Shame' (Knopf, 2022) "Art," she says, "is the medicine that heals our heart from the darkness that overwhelms and transforms us. You need to create art not to distract you but to bring you in touch with this darkness that is inside us. Art's mission isn't to entertain or distract. Art's mission is for making you sit with your wounds and transform those demons before those demons transform you."

In this post-pandemic world, where politicians have failed to lead, and the world seems heartbroken, Cisneros continues to turn to her spiritual teachers: the late Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh and Pema Chödrön, an American Buddhist teacher, author, nun.

If she had to give anyone writing advice, Cisneros says she would tell them to write in the spirit of service. "What the writing has taught me is [that], whatever I create with love--on behalf of those I love, with no ego involved, no personal agenda—siempre sale bonito; it always turns out well," she advises. "When you write, you have to be in some place of service, generosity and absolute humility."

In this episode of OP Talks, historian Dr. Felipe Hinojosa talks to filmmaker Ray Santiesteban about his documentary The First Rainbow Coalition (Independent Lens, 2020) and the need for more Latinx historians and filmmakers. Through rare archival footage and interviews with members of The Rainbow Coalition, Santiesteban tells the story of the groundbreaking alliance between the Black Panther Party, Hispanic activist group The Young Lords, and The Young Patriots, comprising working-class southern whites. In the 1960s, the alliance banded together as The Rainbow Coalition in Chicago—one of the most segregated cities at the time—to fight police brutality and substandard housing.

Though the documentary covers events from 50 years ago, says Santiesteban, the documentary “is still relevant because we're still grappling with [what] people were fighting against in the ‘60s.” Because the United States is more diverse than it was then, he adds, coalitions across ethnic lines have even more potential today.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY

In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latinx group the Young Lords Organization and the working-class young southern whites of the Young Patriots. Finding common ground, these disparate groups banded together in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing, calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition. The First Rainbow Coalition tells the movement’s little-known story through rare archival footage and interviews with former coalition members in the present-day. 

While the coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Fred Hampton, it had a long term impact, breaking down barriers between communities, and creating a model for future activists and diverse politicians across America.

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Independent Lens Discussion Guide for The Rainbow Coalition [DOWNLOAD PDF]

“The arts is where we find our humanity,” says José Pérez, who spent 20 years in prison and now advocates for the rehabilitative arts and foster children. He credits poetry, and the arts in general, with transforming his life. “Our art comes from us. It comes from the deepest parts of ourselves,” he tells cultural sociologist Rev. Dr. Tony T. R. Lin. “And when [our art] goes into the world, you know, it's like you're sharing yourself with someone.”

In this episode of OP Talks, Pérez also reads three of his poems, part of a larger collection previously featured on HTI Open Plaza. The episode opens with “Sense of Mind,” a poem Pérez calls a prayer. First incarcerated at age thirteen, then a second time at sixteen, he describes his mindset then: "I thought in my head—in my immature and my young mind—I thought that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison. Little did I know that that poem was like a prayer. That was like God’s gift."

Pérez left prison with a calling to help advocate for rehabilitative arts programs in prisons. He also advocates for children and teenagers who, like him, grew up in the foster system. “I'm speaking to that right now, being proactive and being able to affect change in that community,” Pérez tells Rev. Dr. Lin. “The poetry, for me, [is] not just about the words; it's also about the action.”

Theologian Lucila Crena talks to photojournalist Eve Fairbanks, who has lived in Johannesburg, South Africa for thirteen years. Her debut book The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning (Simon and Schuster, 2022) “weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy.” As Fairbanks points out, there was a time when the Apartheid system of segregation in South Africa seemed like an "eternal Gordian Knot, like a hopeless bind." That is, "until 1994, when, suddenly, you had, in one day, [a] parliament change from being 100 percent white to being 80 percent people of color...literally overnight."

Faith, Love, Outreach, Restoration, Advancing the Gospel—these are the stated values of FLORA Ministries, founded by Noemi Córdova. Based out of Expansion Church in Queens, New York, the organization “supports immigrant families and mobilizes the Church to build with their communities.” In this episode of OP Talk, Rev. Milly Silencio talks to Córdova, who is “passionate about working alongside others and seeing people come together to foster hope in their communities.”