The Reality Dysfunction - Unscripted/Unsilenced

This special episode of The Reality Dysfunction was recorded April 23, 2020, in a Zoom/Facebook live webinar hosted by Mexicanos 2070 an organization I have been working with for close to a year now. 

In this presentation the moderator is myself Dr. Ernesto and the panelists are all current members of the Raza Unida Party located in the Pacoima/San Fernando area. Our speakers are Ernesto Ayala, Jenaro Ayala, Estela Ayala, and Amado Guzman. This is a dynamic conversation about the current state of Xicano/a politics and the necessity of building organization in our communities.

In the episode of The Reality Dysfunction: X/L Edition our panel of dysfunctional experts on the Xicano Lation community take on the issues of gentrification. As the children of white flighters find their way back into the inner city Xicanos/Latinos find themselves faced once again with physical, emotional and economic displacement from neighborhoods that have generational significance. 

Perhaps a part of the solution to gentrification can be found in the development of political, economic and educational strucutures that push the Xicano/Latino community beyond our colonized relationship with the United States.

Find us on Facebook

Find us on Twitter:

@ernestomireles

@alexandralozada

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.

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. 

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

-----------------------------

Follow me on Twitter @ernestomireles

Or my blog at waroftheflea.org/laxicanadx

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 [email protected] or DM me on Twitter @ernestomireles. 

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.

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

----------------------

You can also listen to The Reality Dysfunction on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Follow me on Twitter @ernestomireles

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.

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.