La Voz - June 2013 by Esperanza Peace and Justice Center

a publication of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

June 2013 | Vol. 26 Issue 5

San Antonio, Tejas

Inside this issue:

La Voz de Esperanza June 2013 vol. 26 issue 5

Editor Gloria A. Ramírez Design Monica V. Velásquez Editorial Assistance Alice Canestaro García

Contributors Marisol Cortez, Anel Flores, Roberto (Dr. Cintli) Rodríguez, and Bill Stichnot

La Voz Mail Collective Diana De La Cruz, Tina Delgado, Juan Diaz, Ángela Melendez García, Jessica Gonzáles, Esther Guajardo, Olivia Martínez, Ray McDonald, María Medellin, Angelita Merla, Lucy & Ray Pérez, Patrick Pineda, Mary Agnes Rodríguez, Victoria Traversi & Ines Valdez

Esperanza Director Graciela I. Sánchez

Esperanza Staff

Imelda Arismendez, Itza Carbajal, Marisol Cortez, J.J. Niño, Jezzika Pérez, Melissa Rodríguez, Beto Salas, Susana Segura, Monica V. Velásquez

Conjunto de Nepantleras

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

-Esperanza Board of Directors-

Brenda Davis, Araceli Herrera, Rachel Jennings, Amy Kastely, Kamala Platt, Ana Ramírez, Gloria A. Ramírez, Rudy Rosales, Nadine Saliba, Graciela Sánchez • We advocate for a wide variety of social, economic & environmental justice issues. • Opinions expressed in La Voz are not necessarily those of the Esperanza Center.

La Voz de Esperanza

is a publication of Esperanza Peace & Justice Center 922 San Pedro, San Antonio, TX 78212

210.228.0201 • fax 1.877.327.5902 www.esperanzacenter.org Inquiries/Articles can be sent to:

lavoz@esperanzacenter.org Articles due by the 8th of each month Policy Statements

* We ask that articles be visionary, progressive, instructive & thoughtful. Submissions must be literate & critical; not sexist, racist, homophobic, violent, or oppressive & may be edited for length. * All letters in response to Esperanza activities or articles in La Voz will be considered for publication. Letters with intent to slander individuals or groups will not be published. Esperanza Peace & Justice Center is funded in part by the NEA, TCA, theFund, Astraea Lesbian Fdn for Justice, Coyote Phoenix Fund, AKR Fdn, Peggy Meyerhoff Pearlstone Fdn, The Kerry Lobel & Marta Drury Fund of Horizon’s Fdn, y nuestra buena gente.

p. 3 p. 5 p. 7 p. 11 p. 13

Pathway to Apartheid & the Codification of Indian Removal II by Roberto Rodriguez Mental Health Care in America, part 2 by Bill Stichnot Right to the City, Rights of Nature by Marisol Cortez Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth Remembering Erica Andrews by Anel Flores

a Espera is the title of the cover art by Liliana Wilson. It was selected specifically for this issue because it speaks to the issue of immigration. The grandmother figure in the image is waiting for the return of a son, daughter or grandchild who has crossed over to the land of the American dream. She does not know whether she/he will return or when. She awaits. La abuela waits surrounded by her plants and animalitos. She also awaits the end of life. Until that last moment, when she can no longer tend to her plantas and yard, she will make every effort to pluck out unwanted weeds, water with her gallon cans, and turn over the earth with her hoe. Then slowly, she will become part of that earth that she tends. So, too, los abuelos. The abuela in the image also speaks to the concept of “mother earth” or la madre tierra. When I look at this piece, I am reminded about our deep connection to the Earth. I am also reminded that not all people see themselves as part of the landscape but, rather, see the landscape as a resource to be mined for riches. In fact, these type of folks see other people as part of the landscape to be mined and exploited so much so that they do whatever it takes to extract from them whatever they want and can take from others. This mentality of “extracting” riches from the earth and from beings is running rampant. It is endangering our very existence. Animals like the elephant and rhino are being hunted down for their tusks and are quickly moving toward extinction. There are countless examples of animals of every kind being poached and killed due to greed. Plants are another genre that are being threatened as seeds become copyrighted and manipulated by corpo-

rations. Farmers and whole communities of indigenous people no longer have the freedom to grow crops at will. Indigenous communities that have relied on traditional farming techniques can no longer rest assured that their semillitas are safe in their communities. Gente, too, are endangered as immigration legislation becomes more and more focused on exploitation and condemnation. The ability of corporate giants to reach over borders to extract riches from bodies of people became AP Photo crystal clear when a Bangladesh garment-factory building collapsed, killing over 1,000 people. This happened even after the owner had been notified by workers that they had heard cracking noises in the building. It happened even after the building was ordered closed the day before. We have written often about the extraction of the earth’s resources, particularly that of fuels like coal, uranium, petroleum, gas and more –but we must extend our thinking and realize that our natural resources are so much greater. La abuelita in the front page picture represents la madre tierra, mother earth and all its resources including all its beings –plants, animals, gente, landscapes, water bodies and everything that makes up the earth. It is time to teach our children to realize that they are part of the land and, as such, stewards of the earth that we live in. In advocating against one injustice we must rise up and write, speak, paint and move to stop all injustice. - Gloria A. Ramírez, editor

ATTENTION VOZ READERS: If you have a mailing address correction please send it in to lavoz@esperanzacenter.org. If you want to be removed from the La Voz mailing list for whatever reason please let us know. La Voz is provided as a courtesy to people on the mailing list of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. The subscription rate is $35 per year ($100 for institutions). The cost of producing and mailing La Voz has substantially increased and we need your help to keep it afloat. To help, send in your subscriptions, sign up as a monthly donor, or send in a donation to the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. Thank you. -GAR VOZ VISION STATEMENT: La Voz de Esperanza speaks for many individual, progressive voices who are gente-based, multi-visioned and milagro-bound. We are diverse survivors of materialism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, classism, violence, earth-damage, speciesism and cultural and political oppression. We are recapturing the powers of alliance, activism and healthy conflict in order to achieve interdependent economic/ spiritual healing and fuerza. La Voz is a resource for peace, justice, and human rights, providing a forum for criticism, information, education, humor and other creative works. La Voz provokes bold actions in response to local and global problems, with the knowledge that the many risks we take for the earth, our body, and the dignity of all people will result in profound change for the seven generations to come.

Pathway to Apartheid & the Codification of Indian Removal II

by Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, SpeakOut | Op-Ed

he Senate’s Immigration proposal is titled: Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernity Act. While being touted by the “gang of 8” senators and the media as a compromise, it should have been filed simply as a “pathway to apartheid” and also a “pathway toward Indian Removal II.”

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

It is a border enforcement and nationnot simply a border, but a nationwide al security piece of legislation – which hunter battalion mentality through its continues to rely heavily on racial profilenforcement apparatuses. It will ining – and is anything but “comprehensive clude systematic searches (E-Verify) immigration reform.” It will be a slow and a national ID system whose objecprocess and, in regards to legalization, tive will be mass deportations and fornothing will commence prior to a fiveprofit mass incarceration schemes. The year project of building more walls and proposal contains $5.5 billion more for fences and a certification that the border the militarization of the border – which is secure. includes increasing reliance on drone In the barrio that I grew up in Los Antechnology and the use of the National geles, we have an expression in Spanish Guard, with a goal of 100% surveilfor such things as this proposed legislalance – and of course, more agents. Its tion: PPP. Rough translation: Pure BS. emphasis will continue to be exclusion Under the guise of reform and leof as many migrants (already here) as galization, the final bill will codify the possible, relying on bureaucratic techcreation of a permanent, stateless class nicalities and exorbitant fines for such of peoples, without full human rights (inexclusions. cluding being ineligible for Obamacare) The codification of a new Indian and without citizenship: the classic defiRemoval policy simply means that nition of dehumanization, this while red-brown Indigenous peoples will continuing the further militarization of continue to be the primary targets of the border. At best, those who do not the migra. These are the same peoples get incarcerated or deported will receive that have been displaced, often vioSantiago Armengod | www.culturestrike.net the status of “registered provisional imlently, by U.S. policies throughout the migrant.” After ten years of that status, Americas. And this targeting is not by they become eligible for the status of “Lawful Permanent Resi- default. It is the result of extreme racial animus that can be read dent.” In total, these applicants would have to wait at least 13 on a daily basis, anywhere in the country, any time the topic of years to become eligible for a “pathway to citizenship” (just in immigration is raised. time for the 2028 elections!). The proposal amounts to false advertising and is based on a The only relatively humane portion of the legislation is the false premise. As Tucson’s Derechos Humanos human rights orone that permits Dream students to become eligible (after many ganization notes, it should be called the: walls, drones, surveilpenalties and financial hurdles) for citizenship after 5 years. Not lance, national ID, criminalization, mass firing, mass deportaunexpectedly, the new bracero program – tailored for the corpo- tion… and the new bracero program act. rate sector, would also kick in sooner. At best, the immigration proposal amounts to an enhanced The full bill can be read at www.schumer.senate.gov/forms/ draconian-based regime (a police state) with the attempt at crimiimmigration.pdf. A two-page outline from Sen. Rubio, no friend nalizing, incarcerating and deporting as many millions of redto migrants, can be read at www.rubio.senate.gov. brown peoples as possible… which is President Obama’s olive What the president will eventually sign into law – after hear- branch to right wing conservatives. While he has deported more ings and amendments and after conferencing between Senate and people than any president before him – destroying untold famiHouse versions – will codify an immigration policy that enforces lies in the process – that is supposed to give him street cred with

As Tucson’s Derechos Humanos human rights organization notes, it should be called the: walls, drones, surveillance, national ID, criminalization, mass firing, mass deportation… and the new bracero program act.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

Melanie Cervantes | www.notonemoredeportation.com

extreme conservatives, who would deport him, too, if they could. This proposal also seeks to needlessly incarcerate tens of thousands – in a for-profit scheme called operation streamline that would have been the envy of apartheid South Africa. Operation Streamline – which benefits the Correctional Corporation of America (and other for-profit companies) is a nationwide criminalization scheme for the “crime” of “illegal entry.” In Tucson, it is a series of daily one-hour “show trials” for 60-70 people, virtually all of them indigenous peoples. The Gang of 8 proposal greatly expands this kangaroo court. This proposal is anything but humane. The whole environment surrounding the immigration “debate” is reminiscent of a twilight zone episode: “To Serve Man.” It is about aliens coming to earth, promising the earthlings peace and prosperity and the end of poverty and starvation. Once peace is achieved, earthlings (fattened up) are promised free vacations to the land of the aliens. Everyone swallows the good news and the promises, except one skeptic who is hard at work translating a book the aliens have left behind. At the end, she cracks the code and shouts to her colleague, who is boarding the alien ship, “It’s a Cookbook!!!” That’s precisely what we have today and many of us seem complicit in the writing of this immigration cookbook, prodding and cajoling politicians to make the legislation better, yet in reality, have been reduced to begging for a palatable bill. Apparently, not everyone has seen that episode.

The irony of the immigration proposal is that it appears to be driven by those who lost the 2012 election; many of them conservatives with racial animus, bent not on lifting 11 million people out of a state of dehumanization, but instead, punishing them. In fact, they seek to codify their exploitation, dehumanization and ostracization, as though they were lepers, i.e., “untouchables.” It is very similar to the gun “debate:” the majority of the people want something done, but the NRA and the weapons industry wins every time. Same with the “debate” over torture, drone warfare and criminal war; the world condemns, but our war machine and its apologists win every time. So why should we expect anything different from the so-called immigration debate? If different sectors feel comfortable being part of this legislative process, so be it. But another legitimate response is to completely reject these sleight-of-hand efforts – which is beginning to take place. Unless the final immigration bill is a human rights document, unless it adheres to all international human rights treaties and conventions – which it will never be – why would anyone want to be complicit in remanding undocumented migrants to the menu and altar of the extremist and supremacist right wing? v - April 29 2013 | This article is a Truthout original.

Bio: Roberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor in Mexican American studies at the University of Arizona, can be reached at xcolumn@ gmail.com. | More @ http://drcintli.blogspot.com

lead plaintiff in the historic 1968 class-action lawsuit, challenging Texas’ method of school funding died on April 22, 2013. Mr. Rodriguez – steadfastly supported and was involved in a series of lawsuits extending over 40 years. He began as a parent trying to get the best education for his children and wound up leading a crusade for all children. He set a good example for all parents and activists and will remain in the forefront of the battle for equity in education in Texas and the U.S. In 2007 St. Mary’s University’s Chicano Civil Rights Series honored him for his role in the school finance fight. In 2010, the Westside Development Corp. honored him as a pioneering education activist, and in 2009, he got the Champion of Equity Award from the Austin-based, Equity Center. At that time, he criticized the Legislature’s slow pace on new reforms. Our condolences to the Rodriguez family and the general community of education and civil rights activists. ¡La lucha continua!

Mental Health Care in America, part 2 I by Bill Stichnot

mental health needs, you and your therapist will have to fight to get more than the minimum treatment from a therapist or psychologist. Because a psychologist costs more money than a Masters level practitioner, the HMOs will likely go with them. As Dr. Ablow suggested, “you get the lowest possible cost care. Someone who doesn’t know you and may not even be a mental health practitioner might be deciding when you are “cured.” HMOs make clients powerless, depriving them of basic rights of choice, privacy and decision making. Managed care is simply a search by the insurer for the least possible treatment performed by the cheapest, least trained, clinician. There are two other problems I see with HMOs. In the 90s they discovered pills. Psychotropic drugs have made advances for some disorders. HMOs have seen that giving people a pill and sending them on their way costs a lot less than a therapist. Take depression as an example. Depending on the severity of the disease, it may take many sessions for the client to get insight into the disease and affect a remission. If that same person should experience another depressive episode, the studies suggest it will mean a lifetime of monitoring if not more sessions, perhaps hospitalizations. HMOs have realized that giving a depressed person Prozac costs a lot less then paying a therapist for a multitude of sessions. To sum up: HMOs really don’t need to pay for longer term therapy, just a pill and declare the client cured. Here is an example that I witnessed involving a person admitted to a Psychiatric Ward because of a suicide attempt. It seemed his wife left him and he became depressed to the point of suicide. He stayed three days in the hospital to get stabilized. He saw his doctor once a day for about half an hour. He was prescribed an antidepressant and discharged. He had no more insight into his depression and what brought him there than he did when he was admitted. In other words, he learned nothing. To make matters worse, studies have shown that a person who has attempted suicide has a greater chance of trying it again than the population as a whole. Also, antidepressants work for only 80% of the population, sometimes turning a person manic. That is how an HMO works: have the therapist see the clients as little as possible, dope the clients up, and send them on their way without any regard to their future safety. And all of this was dictated by a third person, perhaps thousands of miles away, who may not even be a licensed therapist. The second problem with HMOs is an ethical problem: lack of confidentiality. The Mental Health Counselors Association and the American Psychology Association give guidelines on the confidentially issue. Indeed, all the clients expect confidentiality so they can speak freely. With few exceptions (threat to self or others) they have it. Now there are times when a therapist technically breaks confidentiality. For example, when talking to their supervisor, or being part of the client’s medical team. But these people, too, are covered by the ethical rules of confidentiality. A breach

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

wrote an article in the July/August 2011 issue of La Voz de Esperanza about Jared Loughner and the shooting of Congresswoman Gifford. The knee jerk reaction to the mass killing was that he was a crazy person, trying to make a political statement in a politically charged environment. As it turned out he was diagnosed as Schizophrenic. On January 8, 2012 Loughner was found fit for trial. He got a life sentence –without parole. Looking at his history and actions, it was clear he was mentally ill. Our present challenge is Adam Lanza. He shot 27 first graders and 6 adults, before killing himself. While we can’t give a definitive diagnosis, because no one talked to him, most are calling him crazy. The point is: “crazy” and “insane” are not diagnostic conclusions. When you look in the DSM IV-TR (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), “the bible” which Psychologists and Psychiatrists use to make diagnoses, you will not find the words “crazy” or “insane” anywhere. The “bible” looks at symptoms to make a diagnosis. No matter what the symptoms are, the psychologist will never diagnose a person as “crazy.” The “bible” categorizes disorders in two axes which affect intervention techniques. Axis I are your clinical disorders that include schizophrenia, depression, bi-polar (manic depressive) disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating/sleeping disorders. Axis II disorders are personality disorders that include paranoia, antisocial (psychopath) borderline, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorders and so on. With each diagnosis comes an intervention (therapy, maybe medication and hospital stay) and this drives us to money and the biggest threat to mental health care – the HMO. Most people cannot pay for the “50 minute hour”. The therapist charges too much money for the workers to pay for multiple session interventions. Enter insurance and the HMO. Dr. Keith Ablow, FOX News commentator, notes: “Largely to save money, insurance companies are the most responsible for decimating the mental health care system in America by demanding such low payment schedules that social workers and nurses have been trying to do heroic work trying to act like psychiatrists, while internal physicians and family physicians have too often tried to treat complex mental illness with medication alone, ignoring the fact that psychological factors fuel those illnesses . . .” Managed Care companies exist primarily to make a profit in a capitalist society. Their business model exists primarily to make a profit – they are not in the business of looking after your personal welfare. Dr. Richmond, who holds a PhD as a clinical psychologist, is an insurance expert. He warns the client that when you sign an insurance form, you are authorizing your therapist to give any information to anyone in the insurance company business. This means anyone can get it, not necessarily a fellow therapist. The client needs to recognize from the beginning what they are up against. If you belong to an HMO and rely on it for your

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

of confidentiality happens when your therapist is having a drink with a buddy and tells the buddy all about you. If discovered, the therapist will certainly be sanctioned, and you could sue and probably win a malpractice suit. So a doctor accepting HMO money is really in a quandary. The doctor will have to report to the HMO the problem(s) with the client, treatment plan, medication, etc. Remember what I said earlier, confidentiality is on a need-to-know basis. But this information could go to the HMO’s secretary, who in turn reports to a bureaucrat, who in turn decides when the client is “cured,” despite the client’s doctor’s opinion, and the client is sent on his way. The thought of giving this confidential information out, puts the attending therapist in an ethical conundrum. There is no telling where your information goes. The HMO is worried about the money, not your health. Before you get depressed and run to your HMO therapist for some Prozac, I have some good news. Psychotropic drugs are making improvements in the mental health field. Also, President Obama is and/or wants to implement major improvements. Liz Szabo of USA Today wrote the headline to her article as “Affordable Care Act Addresses Mental Health Issues.” Health exchanges must cover mental care and substance abuse treatment. She wrote, “While the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) won’t fix every problem, it will provide health care coverage to previously uninsured Americans.” Garth Graham, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, says that new health exchanges will be required to cover mental health and substance abuse treatment. Most people will be eligible for Medicaid, such as low income adults without children, or will be able to buy coverage through new health exchanges. People won’t be able to discriminate against patients with a previous mental health condition. Finally, the law eliminates the lifetime cap on benefits, so that families won’t exhaust their coverage. The Sandy Hook massacre is starting to make in impact in mental health. Andrew Edwards, writing for the LA Daily News, writes, “Politicians’ responses to the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy have most prominently resulted in a push for gun control legislation, but the shootings have also given impetus to a new conversation on mental health policies.” Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento, adds, “Now is the time to bolster access to mental

health care and improve public safety for all Americans. I urge Vice-President Biden to include the Excellence in Mental Health Act in the task force recommendations.” Darrell Steinberg, the state Senate’s top Democrat, has called for the nation to adopt California’s mental health prevention and treatment system. The state senator’s proposal is based on Proposition 63, which California voters approved in 2004. Steinberg wrote the measure, which levies a one percent tax on incomes greater than $1 million to fund housing, medication, therapy and other mental health problems. Steinberg said he is not proposing that Congress necessarily enact a similar tax increase on a national scale. He does, however, want the federal government to provide matching funds to states’ mental health programs. “State provided programs,” Steinberg said, “would include prevention, education on the signs of mental illness and suicide prevention.” Steinberg authored a letter to Biden in which he wrote that if Congress were to appropriate a dollar-for-dollar match for states’ mental health programs, the cost would be about $20 billion. He also maintained that every dollar spent on Prop. 63 programs has saved 88 cents on the criminal justice system and other health and housing costs. Matsui’s Excellence in Mental Health Bill predates Steinberg’s idea but is similar. Her bill, introduced last June, would allow community clinics to receive Medicaid reimbursements when providing mental health or addiction treatment of lowincome patients. Another funding proposal would come from Napolitano’s office. The Santa Fe Springs lawmaker has announced that she will reintroduce her Mental Health in Schools bill, which would provide grant funding for therapists and other caregivers at schools. Supporters of the Affordable Care Act say the law should help more Americans who could benefit from mental health care receive treatment. In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, with the help of Vice-President Biden, President Obama came up with 23 Executive Orders that he wants implemented. He devoted an entire section of the Executive Order to mental health, titled: “Improving Mental Health Services”. I’ll summarize: (A): As President Obama said, “We are going to need to work on making access to mental health care as easy as access to a gun.” (B): Today, less than half of children and adults with diagnosable mental health problems receive the treatment they need. (C): Make sure students and young adults get treatment for mental

In the wake if the Sandy Hook shootings, with the help of Vice President Biden, President Obama came up with 23 Executive Orders that he wants implemented.

. . . cont’d on pg 12

Right to the City, Rights of Nature by Marisol Cortez

PART FOUR Cities as if Women Mattered: a La Voz special series

Steadily, and far down in my heart, burn images of homeland. - Reyes Garcia, “Notes on (Home)Land Ethics”

So that we might better understand our own local resistance in relation to this global movement, it behooves us to ask: What is this different image? Where does it come from, and what does it call for? As a contemporary movement, RTTC asks (as has this series): Whose desires count? Who gets to say what the shape of the city should be? As a framework for community organizing, the right to the city framework is a relatively recent one, emerging as movement moniker with the formation of the RTTC Alliance at the 2007 World Social Forum—a national coalition of mostly poor and people of color organizations focused on a wide variety of issues, from tenants’ rights to transportation equity to anti-gentrification work and environmental justice. However, the term itself goes back to the 1960s work of French social theorist Henri Lefebvre, who wrote just before the Parisian student revolts of ’68. According to geographer Mark Purcell, Lefebrve’s original concept of the right to the city entailed “two principal rights for urban inhabitants: the right to participation, and the right to appropriation.” The right to participation is straightforward and familiar: it involves the greater access of city dwellers to the decision-making processes that shape urban space, “fundamentally shifting control

away from capital and the state and toward urban inhabitants,” as Purcell writes. The right to appropriation, on the other hand, suggests the right not only to weigh in on preselected plans, but more fundamentally to organize cities to meet the needs of inhabitants. Rather than simply expanding opportunities to choose between Coke and Pepsi, the right to appropriation recognizes a desire for an alternative to growth-at-any-cost imperatives, a desire to create and use the city outside of a logic of commodification. Here, it is the value of urban space as commons, as resource that meets needs basic to human and planetary wellbeing, which becomes primary over its market value as real estate or property. The right to appropriation is what’s captured in the “cities as if women mattered” of the series title: the right to cities that provide for the needs of the most vulnerable residents for safe and affordable housing, quality public education, well-funded public parks and libraries and arts programs, clean water and air, access to healthy food. Cities as if women mattered are cities as if children and elders mattered, as if poor people, homeless people, the queer and the trans, those with mental illness, those without papers, those with HIV, mattered. However, the right to appropriation also means the recognition and remembrance of urban space as land, primarily. City space, especially public spaces like parks, streets, and plazas, is arguably where we not only honor the complex polyvocality of those who gather there; but also where, even amidst the enclosures of property relations, we remember a deeper, primary, foundational connection to land as nature to which we belong. Wherever we might live in the city, we live here; and the sidewalks we travel, the vacant lots where our children explore, the river banks where we walk with a lover or brokenhearted, the untended parks where we fear to hang out after dark are not simply abstract spaces that belong to us, but land that reminds us of a prior belonging that persists even still. This reinhabitation, a seeing of some original connection that has disappeared in plain sight, spurs a recognition that there is something indomitable about this connection. It cannot be bulldozed or razed; it cannot be taken from us. To that end, I want to push the notion of a “right to the city” even further. It is not just about democratic participation or economic redistribution, though of course it is also about that. It is

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

f neoliberal urbanism is the name of the system that sets the biggest picture limits on city decision making over land, right to the city is the name of the global movement that has challenged these limits and attempted to “reshape the city in a different image from that put forward by the developers, who are backed by finance, corporate capital and an increasingly entrepreneurially minded local state apparatus”

also about reinhabitation as a strategy of decolonization: remembering that we are part of a commons from which we have been dispossessed in order to create the space of the city. In a city that is majority minority - brown and black - this is also a remembering of relations to indigeneity, however distant. It is about remembering that la madre tierra herself has an inherent right simply to exist and endure—self-organizing, intact, healthy.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

WPO Will Never Retreat

It was in Kansas, far from home, where I had moved to take a teaching position at the state university, that I first became familiar in a deep way with the idea of the “rights of nature” or “rights of mother earth.” But this was not my first encounter with those terms. I remembered them from the months following the failure of the 2009 international climate talks in Copenhagen to establish sane global standards for carbon emissions. Because this failure largely resulted from the de facto exclusion of the most impacted communities from the negotiations—indigenous communities, small island nations, third world countries, and EJ communities in the global North—indigenous Bolivian president Evo Morales in 2010 convened a Global South counter-conference called the World’s People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth. In contrast to the insufficient and toothless Copenhagen accord, this conference produced a draft of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, a paradigm-shifting statement defining earth as “a self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings,” and which as such possesses inalienable rights “to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions”--or, more simply stated, to keep living (for the full statement, see page 11 of this issue). Adopted by the Bolivian government (an earlier version was adopted in 2008 by Ecuador), the statement was submitted to the UN for consideration of adoption, and has since become the basis for a global movement to pass rights of nature ordinances in municipalities whose commons are threatened by industrial depredations. In 2010, for instance, Pittsburgh became the largest U.S. city to pass such an ordinance, using it to ban fracking within city limits. In April of 2012, during my last semester in Kansas, I happened to be living in the town where the first North American response to the World People’s Conference gathered. Organized by Indigenous Environmental Network at Haskell Indian Nations University, the Rights of Mother Earth conference explored the philosophical and strategic value of the “rights of nature” concept for the defense of indigenous lifeways and land relations, and more broadly, for defense of the planet in an era of catastrophic climate change. At stake for many of the conference participants was whether the western legal framework of “rights” discourse could be used effectively against the very same legal framework that preserved property rights above all else, no matter the impact on people or planet. As a non-indigenous concept, many participants questioned whether the concept of the rights of nature could be an effective tool in preserving treaty rights and ensuring environmental protection. Other participants pointed to the important success of many communities in using rights of nature laws to halt extractive industries. At the very least, attendees agreed that the idea that nature or mother earth is a living being to which human communities have responsibilities resonated compellingly with many indigenous knowledge traditions and spiritual practices.

I had found my way to Haskell because of the wetlands that surrounded the campus, and I had found my way to the wetlands because I was hurting. I had arrived in Kansas amidst crisis, following a traumatic move out of state that followed fast on the heels of a split with my daughter’s father. After a time spent organizing around environmental justice issues in San Antonio near family and friends, I returned to academia in shock-now a single parent, now with a deeper commitment to social movement goals, now no longer sure whether it made sense for me to continue as an academic. Everything was suddenly up for question, and I arrived on the doorstep of hardwon job security inexplicably wracked with longing for home. I longed for home, but I had been flung centripetally to the center of the continent. I longed for people who could pronounce my name without needing explanation of what it meant or where I came from, the various histories braided into my body. I longed for landforms I recognized. Weather patterns I remembered: the feel of the air in early March, white and empty, when the season turns from winter to spring, a slack absence signaling the imminent return of deadly heat. I longed for not needing to explain what that feels like, for a mute and mutual recognition. Familiar foods, familiar faces. I longed for place, for an intellectual praxis that was not placeless, head severed from heart and gut: the fiction that we could go just anywhere and teach and write. As though knowledge was portable, rootless, an abstract quantity one could gain and take wherever. As though we ourselves were abstract quantities, without concrete attachments: families, lovers, neighborhoods. What good was knowledge, I found myself wondering, if it was not embedded in the local or embodied in the particular, if it did not come back to what mattered--struggles to create a different world, struggles to protect the land, the air, the water, the sky? In arguing for the importance of devising place-based ways of teaching and learning, Native geographer Jay Johnson has pointed out how Western ways of knowing in fact idealize placelessness. “Placelessness,” he writes, “is a primary component of our modern Western condition[,] … a byproduct of the Enlightenment metanarrative [or, thinking] which serves to divide culture from nature, leading to a loss of connection to our places, to our environment, our landscape and to the knowledge stored within the landscapes.” One profound dimension of colonialism, then, has been not just the physical removal of black and brown bodies from the land, but the disruption and destruction of lifeways and cultural knowledge embedded in particular landscapes. Among other things, it is a violent upturning of knowledge systems so as to empty them out

‘right ... is also abou

a strateg

rememberin commons fr dispossesse the space o

” y t i c e to th as n io t a it b a ut reinh n:

ganization and to the wetlands. For more than thirty years, Native students at Haskell and local allies had held off plans by the city and the state highway department to expand a highway project that would cut through the last bit of existing river bottoms that surrounded Haskell’s campus. For almost twenty years, they had tied up the project in court; when one lawsuit failed, they’d file another. The wetlands were not only beautiful, their biodiversity not only endangered; they also had deep historic and sacred meaning for the students who attended Haskell from 150 different indigenous nations. The wetlands were where Indian children, wrested from their families during the boarding school years, would meet family members barred from staying in town by anti-Indian racism. The wetlands were where children ran away to escape the militaristic environment of a school whose Americanizing mission cut off hair, prohibited native languages, and forced children to learn Western agricultural methods, so as to “kill the Indian and save the man,” in the infamous words of Captain Richat the University of Kansas ard Pratt. The Wetlands Preservation Organization wetlands proof their previ- vided the cover for forbidden ceremonial practices to continue. ous meanings They were where children sought refuge, and where they were buried when they died from cold or malnutrition or disease. In and histories. This elevation of abstracted, Western ways of knowing over the years after Haskell transferred to tribal administration and beplace-based, indigenous knowledge was given physical expres- came a center of indigenous cultural survival rather than its exsion in the geographical placement of the two universities that termination, the wetlands served as the living lab where students shaped my time in Lawrence, Kansas. A large land grant univer- recovered traditional medicine and native languages. This history remained embedded within the landscape, even as sity, the University of Kansas sat on a hill so steep one could not ride one’s bike more than halfway up before having to hop off. the local, state, and federal governments of the U.S. encroached A university on a hill that froze hard and cold the first winter- upon Haskell’s campus little by little, parceling off pieces of the -although the second winter it hardly snowed at all, alarmingly- wetlands to the fish and wildlife bureau; the university on the hill; -while down below was the town. And below that in the river bot- the university down the road; and eventually to the highway extoms of the Wakarusa lay the remnants of wetlands surrounding pansion project aiming to ease commuter traffic by connecting the another school, this one wrested from the bloody history of the bedroom community of Lawrence to the wealthy suburbs of Kanfederal Indian boarding schools. Haskell Indian Nations Univer- sas City. There in the fragments of wetlands that remained, I felt sity was built in the swamps in the late 1800s –next to the waste- the presence of the children who had died so far from home. That water lift station, next to the hazardous materials drop-off site for space of atrocity and survival was the only space that reached within me the grief of exile and metamorphosis both, that underthe small Midwestern town in which I found myself. I found my way to the wetlands during that first, strange se- stood my terrible longing to return home. There were almost no mester in Kansas, searching for some place or community that Chican@s in Kansas, almost no one who looked like--well, not could hold the pain of what felt like the death of a previous self. necessarily like me, given my mixed blood. But almost no one At a dinner where the new postdocs were introduced to the donors who looked like familia, like gente I grew up with, like home. who had made our positions possible, a woman from Haskell ap- I had to stop myself from waving to the rooferos I saw on my proached, introducing herself and giving me her card. She was the trudge up the hill, knowing they would not see me as kin. Almost librarian there. You said you do environmental justice work. You no Chican@s...but there were Indians. And for the first time in my life, in my non-indigenous alliance with indigenous communities, should come visit us, she said. That’s how I found my way to the Wetlands Preservation Or- I was struck by what it really means to have mestiza conscious-

io t a iz n o l o c e gy of d

a f o t r a p e r a ng that we been e v a h e w h c i rom wh te a e r c o t r e d r ed in o of the city.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

ness, to think of ourselves not as “Hispanics” or even “Latin@s,” but as mestizas and mestizos, descendents of place-based cultures engaged in struggle to preserve an original relationship to sacred lands, still reeling from the trauma of historical displacement. The irony, then, is that I arrived in Kansas feeling uprooted and displaced, but it was in Kansas, fighting alongside Native students and professors to defend the wetlands, that I came to understand the profound importance of a kind of intellectual work that is embedded in specific homeplaces, and as a result engaged in an embodied way in struggles to protect them. It was my time in Kansas that finally gave me permission to stop running away from my longing to come home.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

From Occupation to Reinhabitation: Back to the Bridge

As Mexican- and African-origin peoples, we once were connected to land--this land or land elsewhere. Environmental historian Carolyn Merchant makes the point that there is an indigeneity for European-descended peoples as well; part of what the expansion of capitalism as a global system has meant is that European elites enclosed the land that the peasantry managed in common as a kind of practice run for the more infamous enclosures and displacements (land theft, genocide, slavery) involved in colonizing other lands. Wherever our ancestors come from on the planet, then, most of us once lived in intimate relation to specific homeplaces—and some of us still do. For communities of color in the US, a large part of what histories of colonialism have meant is the trauma of being physically uprooted from those homeplaces via forced relocation and culturally displaced via the erasure of local, place-based ties, languages, histories, and identities. The land grab has always been, and continues to be, central to the displacements of colonial processes. This is mine now, says the colonial land grab, even if you have some prior claim. Your prior claim means nothing in the face of our ability to redefine the terms of the agreement when it works to our interest. If we say this land was never intended as a park, says the legal apparatus of the postcolonial state, that history never existed. If we say there has been a fourteen-month process of consulting with supportive local elites, there never was a prior fourteen year process of city meetings with a diverse cross-section of community interests. Thinking about what would be necessary now to resist the “colonization of space for the affluent” within contemporary cities--Harvey’s words once more--I think of the Idle No More uprisings of the past winter, or Haskell’s 30-year struggle to keep the Kansas Department of Transportation out of the wetlands. I think of the victorious, decades-long legal battle against Chevron by Kichwa groups in Ecuador, for the transnational oil company’s dumping of billions of gallons of toxic wastewater into the Amazon. I think of the words of Diane Wilson, 4th generation Gulf Coast shrimper, who remembers as a child seeing a grey woman, protector of gulf waters, rising from their spume. We must have immediacy in our actions and fight ceaselessly for the earth, its creatures and all of our fellow human beings. We will never surrender. I think of Haskell professor Daniel Wildcat’s argument that what the crisis of climate change requires is the “cultural climate change” represented by “indigenuity.” Hopefulness resides

with the peoples who continue to find their identities emerge out of what I call nature-culture nexus … and it resides with those who are willing to reimagine lifeways that emerge from that nexus. Native or not. I think of Devon Pena’s concept of “Chicana/o bioregionalism,” a call for the mestiza/o peoples of the Southwest to reinhabit homelands we have lost in plain sight: [O]ur origin communities created ecologically sustainable livelihoods well before the term ‘conservation’ entered the vernacular[.] ... Our effort to reorient Chicano Studies through an epistemology of place intends to open new avenues for the expression of the social and cultural practices of local, or situated knowledge. … Lacking an epistemology of local knowledge, students of Chicano Studies will be left with few options for critically approaching and perhaps reversing the political-economic processes that destroy places. ... [W]e argue that decolonizing ourselves (our communities and bodies) is inherently connected to the decolonization of nature. I think of these struggles, these words, these concepts, because I think there is something that happens to a people’s resolve when their identities are grounded in a profound connection to land. The right to the city must in the end lead us to recognize the city--both public spaces and private property--as nature, and to recognize the rights of nature for itself, and to remember in our lived connections to homeplaces that we are guardians of those rights. The rights of nature are not above our right to survive and thrive and sustain ourselves as a species, but they do--or, should--supercede the rights of property as encoded within the entire western legal system, defended by a few at the cost of everyone else. As we’ll pick up on in the next and final installment, our vision of community “development” does not simply involve expanding the entitlements of property and capital accumulation among those historically excluded from doing so. Rather, we envision an alternative social and economic organization grounded in a careful restoration of local—place-based—knowledge. This is a recovery of mestiza/o neighborhood lifeways of building, trading, doing, and relating that have been paved over by the enclosures of property, the dispossessions of race, the violences of gender. This is what Chicana environmental scholar Laura Pulido calls the “environmentalism of everyday life,” poised against both the depredations of neoliberal urbanism and the insufficient environmentalisms of city initiatives, inattentive to deep considerations of power and justice. This is the survival of working class engagements with place via the sharing of memorias, fotos, dichos, comida, stories: Westside stories, Eastside stories, Southside stories. I remember when I was a kid and there was no bridge there, to cross the tracks on Guadalupe. A memory shared at a meeting, of riding in the car with his mother. Man, those trains would hold you up forever, sometimes. What it felt like to be cut off physically, pushed out. Or: Once, when my family was having a rough time. Spoken to me forty years later on the Hays Street Bridge, the words of an Eastside neighborhood son, beer in hand. I remember running out into the neighborhood, to hang out on the bridge. Hopelessly inebriated, but making sense still. What it felt like to inhabit those same marginal spaces of neglect as nature, seeking refuge in what lives yet. Some original, surviving connection to home, preserved in memory, that now is worth fighting for. Bio: Marisol Cortez attempts to inhabit the impossible interstices between academic and activist worlds. She works primarily on issues of environmental justice as a creative writer, community organizer and liberation sociologist. Email her at cortez.marisol@gmail.com

Rights of

Mother Earth

Proposal Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth From World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 22 April – Earth Day 2010.

Preamble | We, the peoples and nations of Earth: considering that we are all part of Mother Earth, an indivisible, living community of interrelated and interdependent beings with a common destiny; gratefully acknowledging that Mother Earth is the source of life, nourishment and learning and provides everything we need to live well; recognizing that the capitalist system and all forms of depredation, exploitation, abuse and contamination have caused great destruction, degradation and disruption of Mother Earth, putting life as we know it today at risk through phenomena such as climate change; convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth; affirming that to guarantee human rights it is necessary to recognize and defend the rights of Mother Earth and all beings in her and that there are existing cultures, practices and laws that do so; conscious of the urgency of taking decisive, collective action to transform structures and systems that cause climate change and other threats to Mother Earth; proclaim this Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, and call on the General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt it, as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world, and to the end that every individual and institution takes responsibility for promoting through teaching, education, and consciousness raising, respect for the rights recognized in this Declaration and ensure through prompt and progressive measures and mechanisms, national and international, their universal and effective recognition and observance among all peoples and States in the world.

Article 1. Mother Earth

its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions; (d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and interrelated being; (e) the right to water as a source of life; (f) the right to clean air; (g) the right to integral health; (h) the right to be free from contamination, pollution and toxic or radioactive waste; (i) the right to not have its genetic structure modified or disrupted in a manner that threatens it integrity or vital and healthy functioning; (j) the right to full and prompt restoration the violation of the rights recognized in this Declaration caused by human activities; (2) Each being has the right to a place and to play its role in Mother Earth for her harmonious functioning. (3) Every being has the right to wellbeing and to live free from torture or cruel treatment by human beings.

(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent rights: (a) the right to life and to exist; (b) the right to be respected; (c) the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue

(2) Human beings, all States, and all public and private institutions must: (a) act in accordance with the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration; (b) recognize and promote the full implementation and en-

Article 3. Obligations of human beings Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother to Mother Earth (1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living Earth in harmony with Mother Earth.

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

(1) Mother Earth is a living being. (2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings. (3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth. (4) The inherent rights of Mother Earth are inalienable in that they arise from the same source as existence. (5) Mother Earth and all beings are entitled to all the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration without distinction of any kind, such as may be made between organic and inorganic beings, species, origin, use to human beings, or any other status. (6) Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the communities within which they exist. (7) The rights of each being are limited by the rights of other beings and any conflict between their rights must be resolved in a way that maintains the integrity, balance and health of Mother Earth.

...in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth...

forcement of the rights and obligations recognized in this Declaration; (c) promote and participate in learning, analysis, interpretation and communication about how to live in harmony with Mother Earth in accordance with this Declaration; (d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth, now and in the future; (e) establish and apply effective norms and laws for the defence, protection and conservation of the rights of Mother Earth; (f) respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth; (g) guarantee that the damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration are rectified and that those responsible are held accountable for restoring the integrity and health of Mother Earth; (h) empower human beings and institutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings;

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

SUGAR RUSH

For Mario Rodríguez’s wonderful catering contact him at 210-863-0132

Mental Health Care in America

Thank you to these businesses for their continued support of Esperanza. . .

(i) establish precautionary and restrictive measures to prevent human activities from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles; (j) guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons; (k) promote and support practices of respect for Mother Earth and all beings, in accordance with their own cultures, traditions and customs; (l) promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth and in accordance with the rights recognized in this Declaration.

Article 4. Definitions (1) The term “being” includes ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other natural entities which exist as part of Mother Earth. (2) Nothing in this Declaration restricts the recognition of other inherent rights of all beings or specified beings. a

Evergreen Garden

Edward Vela

(210) 735-0669 922 W. Hildebrand San Antonio, T X 78201

- continued from pg 6

health issues. Three-quarters of mental illnesses appear by the age of 24, yet less than half of children with diagnosable mental health problems receive treatment. (D): Reach 750,000 young people through programs to identify mental illness early and refer them to treatment. (E): Provide “Mental Health First Aid” training for teachers. (F): Make sure students with signs of mental illness get referred to treatment. This would have helped Loughner and perhaps could have stopped the shooting of Congresswoman Gifford. (G): Support individuals ages 16-25 at high risk for mental illness. (H): Train more than 5,000 additional mental health professionals to serve students and young adults. To help fill this gap, the administration is proposing $50 million to train social workers, counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals. (I): Finalize requirements for private health insurance plans to cover mental health service and, finally

(J): Make sure millions of Americans covered by Medicaid get quality mental health coverage. Medicaid is already the biggest funder of mental health services and the Affordable Care Act will extend Medicaid coverage to as many as 17 million hardworking Americans. Summing up Dr. Ablow writes “Just as promising is a reliable mental health system that could offer care to the many millions of Americans currently untreated, under-treated or incompetently treated –saving millions more from suicide and billions each year in lost productivity.” Don’t just sit there and shake your head in silence – occupy the Capital, until we have good mental health treatment. Let’s never get a D again. n Bio: Bill Stichnot has been a supporter of Esperanza since the early 90s. He was in a Masters Program in Psychological Counseling at St Mary’s University in San Antonio. He is now retired in Hawaii.

Evangelina Villarreal Rosales The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center staff and board extend our heartfelt condolences to the Rosales family (Grace) on the recent passing of their mother/ grandmother, Evangelina Villarreal Rosales, born in Laredo, Tx on September 26, 1924. Sra. Rosales was the consummate homemaker making her home and family the center of her world. Her various interests included sewing, quilting, tending to her plantitas and ceramics. She generously donated her kiln to the Mujerartes Clay Cooperative when it was no longer in use. Doña Eva is survived by her 4 children, 9 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. QEPD

Remembering Erica Andrews

y mother wasn’t talking to me and I felt like every passerby, even my own reflection in the mirror, was looking at my men’s boots, black cap and men’s button down shirt with disgust, hate and fear because I didn’t fit into their feminine gender costumes, and most importantly, because I was open about being a girl who loved girls. The following year, when I was 20 years old, I met Erica Andrews, who at the time was working at the Dillard’s MAC counter and also performing at the Saint. I was a college student with very little cash, but offered to buy her lunch at the food court (which for me was a huge splurge).

I honestly don’t know how I graduated from college, nor paid any of my bills because I was at her shows, every Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday

A few years ago, Jesus Alonzo produced a play titled “Miss America: A Mexicanito Fairy’s Tale,” that starred Ms. Erica, and I was called in to do a few things with the production back stage. During that time she and I were able to sit down again for a good long talk. I discovered in our remembering, during the time that she came into my life, my mother was absent and I didn’t have a woman to look up to as I was growing from teenager to Mujer. Erica Andrews was the amazing Mexicana, Mujer, mami, I looked up to. I am grateful to have been able to tell her that day she was my Mother-Mami role model. When I enter a room, to this day, I still imagine you, Erica, and the way you walked fearlessly through a line of fire for many of us. I put on my imaginary tacones, redden my lips and walk tall, confident that my truth will prevail against any hate. And, from one Mami to another, gracias for being my mami and showing me how to be a good one to our daughters. Your memory will always live in my stories. I’ll buy you lunch again one day, and I promise it will not be at the food court. RIP, Erica Andrews 03/11/2013

Con cariño, Anel I. Flores

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

We talked closely during her hour lunch break about the discrimination she experienced daily and I shared my stories as well. When I walked her back to work and watched her walk off to her spot behind the color lined black counter, I saw the ugly caras the other women in the store gave her and even spotted one pointing at her while whispering to a customer. Erica’s majesty and strength to walk through all of those bullets awed me, taught me that we must stand tall (even in tacones) if we are to survive and thrive in this world.

for several years after that, and still attended them up until late last year, gathering strength and confidence every time I saw her.

* community meetings * LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

Amnesty International #127 info. Call Arthur Dawes, 210.213.5919. Anti-War Peace Vigil 4th Thursday (since 9/11/2001) from 4-5pm @ Flores & Commerce Contact Tim 210.822.4525 | timduda@aol.com Bexar Co. Green Party info@bexargreens.org or call 210.471.1791. Celebration Circle meets on Sundays, 11am @ JumpStart @ Blue Star Arts Complex. Meditation, Weds @ 7:30 pm @ Quaker Meeting House, 7052 Vandiver. 210.533-6767

Parents of Murdered Children, meets 2nd Mondays @ Balcones Heights Community Ctr, 107 Glenarm | www.pomcsanantonio.org

in San Antonio

¡Todos Somos Esperanza!

Start your 2013 monthly donations now!

Proyecto Hospitalidad Liturgy meets each Thursday at 7pm at 325 Courtland. The Rape Crisis Center, Hotline @ 210.349-7273. 210.521.7273 or email Drominishi@rapecrisis.com 7500 US Hwy 90 W.

Adult Wellness Support Group sponsored by PRIDE Center of SA meets 4th Mondays, 7-9 pm @ Lions Field Club House, 2809 Broadway. Call 210.213.5919.

The Religious Society of Friends meets Sundays @ 10am @ The Friends Meeting House, 7052 N. Vandiver. 210.945.8456.

Energia Mia meets 3rd Saturday, 1pm @ Oblate School of Theology, 285 Oblate Dr. Call 210.849.8121

San Antonio’s Communist Party USA meets 3-5 pm 2nd Sundays at Bazan Library, 2200 W. Commerce. juanchostanford@yahoo.com

Fuerza Unida, 710 New Laredo, Hwy. 210.927.2294 www.lafuerzaunida.org

S.A. Gender Association meets 1st & 3rd Thursdays, 6-9pm @ 611 E. Myrtle, MCCSA

Habitat for Humanity meets 1st Tues. for volunteer orientation, 6pm, HFHSA Office @ 311 Probandt.

The SA AIDS Foundation offers free HIV testing at 818 E. Grayson St. 210.225.4715|www.txsaaf.org.

S.A. International Woman’s Day March & Rally planning committee meets year-round. www.sawomenwillmarch.org or 210.262.0654

Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Center classes are on Tuesdays 7-8pm, & Sundays from 9:30am12:30pm at 1114 So. St. Mary’s. Call 210.222.9303.

PFLAG, meets 1st Thursdays @

Progressive Movement

PFLAG Español meets 1st Tuesdays (Primer martes) @ 2802 W. Salinas, 7pm. 210.849.6315

DIGNITY S.A. gathering 5:15 pm, mass 5:30 pm, Sunday @ Beacon Hill Presbyterian Church, 1101 W. Woodlawn. Call 210.340.2230

Metropolitan Community Church in S.A. (MCCSA) 611 East Myrtle, has services & Sunday school @ 10:30am. Call 210.472.3597

Be Part of a

7pm, University Presbyterian Church of San Antonio, 300 Bushnell Av. 210.655.2383.

S.N.A.P. (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Contact Barbara at 210.725.8329. Voice for Animals: 210.737.3138 or www.voiceforanimals.org for info

Esperanza works to bring awareness and action on issues relevant to our communities. With our vision for social, environmental, economic and gender justice, Esperanza centers the voices and experiences of the poor & working class, women, queer people and people of color. We hold pláticas and workshops; organize political actions; present exhibits and performances and document and preserve our cultural histories. We consistently challenge City Council and the corporate powers of the city on issues of development, low-wage jobs, gentrification, clean energy and more. It takes all of us to keep the Esperanza going. When you contribute monthly to the Esperanza you are making a long-term commitment to the movement for progressive change in San Antonio, allowing Esperanza to sustain and expand our programs. Monthly donors can give as little as $5 and as much as $500 a month or more. What would it take for YOU to become a monthly donor? Call or come by the Esperanza to learn how. ¡Esperanza vive! ¡La lucha sigue! Call 210.228.0201 or email esperanza@esperanzacenter.org for more info

Make a tax-deductible donation. $35 La Voz subscription

for more info call 210.228.0201

Please use my donation for the Rinconcito de Esperanza

Notas Y Más June 2013

Brief news items on upcoming community events. Send info for Notas y Más to: lavoz@esperanzacenter.org or mail to: 922 San Pedro, San Antonio, TX 78212. The deadline is the 8th of each month.

The Alamo City Community Marching Band Fund-raiser BBQ and Concert is Saturday, June 1st at 3pm @ San Antonio Mennonite Church, 1443 S. St. Mary’s St. (across from Brackenridge H.S.). Tickets are $7 and include BBQ chicken, sausage, and sides. Proceeds go towards new uniforms for the 2014 year. | Email band. info@accmb.org or call 210.787.0526.

call for entries deadline is Sat, June 1. Fes- Pilgrimage and Belonging to be held July tival takes place July 11-13. | Contact: 210- 17-20 at Ohio State University. In addition, 736-1500 or josiahfestival@urban15.org. the Academic Article Writing Workshop will be held July 17 & 19. Submission are San Antonio Communist Party USA due June 15, 2013. | www.malcs.org Club meeting Sunday, June 9 @ Bazan Branch Library, 2200 W. Commerce St. 38th National Conference on Men & (at Nueces) to discuss building a move- Masculinities ~ Forging Justice: Creatment in S.A. to free the Cuban 5 and orga- ing Safe, Equal & Accountable Comnize around other issues related to Cuba | munities meets August 8-10 in Detroit. | The People’s Power Coalition commu- Contact juanchostanford@yahoo.com. www.nomas.org. nity meeting is Wednesday, June 5th at 6:30 Aztlán Libre Press, an independent Xipm at Southwest Workers Union (1416 E The 9th Annual Queer Women of Color can@ press based out of San Antonio, TexCommerce) in the Roots of Change Com- Film Festival is scheduled on June 14-16 as, announces the publication of its sixth munity Garden. in San Francisco. | www.qwocmap.org book: Reyes Cárdenas: Chicano Poet People’s Power Coalition also hosts CantoMundo for Latina/o poets convenes 1970-2010. Visit www.aztlanlibrepress. study-ins at the Bazan Library (2200 W. June 27-30 at UT–Austin. Apply at: www. com to purchase and review books. Commerce) on energy & environmental cantomundo.org/guidelinesapplication The 2013 American Grants & Loans justice every other Saturday 11am–1pm Catalog contains more than 2800 financial (June 1st, 15th, & 29th!). | www.facebook. Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS) invites submissions for its programs, subsidies, scholarships, grants com/ThePeoplesPowerCoalition annual Summer Institute: ¡Aquí Estamos! & loans offered by the federal government. Urban 15’s 2013 Josiah Media Festival’s / We Are Here!: Movements, Migrations, To order call: 1 (800) 610-4543.

for a City-Wide, Fully Inclusive

Human Rights Ordinance

Not all citizens in San Antonio have equal rights! LGBT, sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity and veteran status are not protected from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

700 citizens have called city hall for humane treatment of dogs and cats. Only 24 have called for human and civil treatment/rights of our fellow human beings!

CAUSA asks all buena gente to call the Mayor and your councilperson* to ask for an inclusive, citywide Human Rights Ordinance to ensure all San Antonians are treated with dignity and respect. Austin and Fort Worth have already passed human rights ordinances and other cities are moving in that direction! San Antonio needs to join in! *Call 335-VOTE for council district numbers. Call Daniel Graney 210.334-7850/210.863-6086 or Dee Villarrubia MSW 210.860.7562 for more on CAUSA and how to get involved!

Join Grassroots Leadership and Texans United for Families (TUFF) to call for the immediate closure of IAH Polk Secure Adult Detention Center 3400 FM 350 South, Livingston, TX 77351

The event is part of the Detention Watch Network’s Expose and Close campaign More info on FaceBook: TexansUnitedForFamilies www.facebook.com/ events/113716412167922/

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

CALL TO ACTION

Father’s Day Caravan to Close the Polk County Detention Center

LA VOZ de ESPERANZA • June 2013 Vol. 26 Issue 5•

En Aquellos Tiempos 2nd Saturday Gathering

Prefer to read it online? Wrong address? LET US KNOW!

Share your fotos & memories of San Anto’s Westside and join us for cafecito, snacks, y convivio @ the Casa de Cuentos!

Saturday, June 8th 10am

TO CANCEL A SUBSCRIPTION

@ 816 S. Colorado (at Guadalupe St)

EMAIL: lavoz@esperanzacenter.org or CALL: 210.228.0201

La Voz de Esperanza

922 San Pedro San Antonio TX 78212 210.228.0201 • www.esperanzacenter.org

Non-Profit Org. US Postage PAID San Antonio, TX Permit #332

Join us for our monthly concert series with singer/ songwriter Azul

Saturday June 15th 8pm @ Esperanza $5 más o menos

Puentes de Poder Summer 2013: Cities of Hope

Join us for Puentes de Poder, an ongoing public education program presented by the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

Saturday, July 13, 2013 7pm @ Esperanza, 922 San Pedro | Free Topic: Gentrification Film Screening: My Brooklyn (2012), followed by a discussion with director Kelly Anderson

Saturday, July 27 11am - Location TBD Topic: Eastside Stories: Community Histories of the Hays St Bridge

Fillm Screening & Platica

Saturday, August 31 Location TBD Topic: Right to the City! Alternatives and Solutions

Call Marisol at 210.878.6751 for more info!