Antes de que Barack Obama se postulara a la presidencia, recuerdo que pensaba que nunca habría un presidente negro en mi vida. Y recuerdo que me sentí abrumado, incluso con lágrimas en los ojos, cuando vi por televisión a la nueva familia presidencial subir al escenario en el Grant Park de Chicago. No fue tanto la imagen del presidente Obama lo que me impactó, sino ver a Michelle y a las niñas, y a la anciana suegra de Barack, que vivirían con dignidad y respeto en la Casa Blanca.
Read MoreBefore Barack Obama ran for president, I remember thinking there would never be a black president in my lifetime. And I remember feeling overwhelmed, even tearful, when I watched on television as the new First Family walked on the stage at Grant Park in Chicago. It wasn’t so much the sight of President Obama that got to me. It was seeing Michelle and the girls, and Barak’s aged mother-in-law who would be living in dignity and esteem in the White House.
Read MoreRead MoreTheir way of speaking as important as their quips. If I give you the details, you’d get distracted because tone and feelings were primary. Feelings I remember now: sad, humor, giggles, sliced thin truth, clever melancholy, thick sadness.
All of that in one-liner feelings. Eight minutes, 23 seconds.
Read MoreSu forma de hablar es tan importante como sus bromas. Si te doy los detalles, te distraerías porque el tono y los sentimientos eran primordiales. Sentimientos que recuerdo ahora: tristeza, humor, risas, verdad finamente cortada, melancolía inteligente, tristeza espesa.
Todo eso en sentimientos de una sola línea. Ocho minutos, 23 segundos.
Un bebé, dentro de un útero, esperando nacer. Dos padres, solteros, buscando algún lugar, porque María sentía que su cuerpo se contraía. Mientras el imperio no lanzaba bombas sobre Mary, peligrosos soldados del imperio acechaban, hablando de la urgencia y la necesidad de una ubicación, para ella y el bebé.
Read MoreA Western perspective on Advent focuses on individualism – reinforces existing structures; it ignores the reality of social structures, reducing structural problems to personal problems. Mary couldn’t find a place to give birth. Yes, the villagers were selfish, but the system also made it normal to perpetrate against an oppressed people, even a mother in active labor.
Read MoreRead More“If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.”
Delores Huerta
Latina American labor leader and civil rights activist
Approximately 64 percent of Hispanic Students are not succeeding to where they should be in mathematics in one of our local middle schools.
Read MoreThere are close links, with research backing these links, between succeeding in 8th grade mathematics, high school graduation, college enrollment and then earnings
Read MoreConditioned against healing the systems oppressing us, I sit here, too. The spice hits my tongue. I love its hotness, the dare of trying more on the next taco.
Unwavering in my tiredness, delight, anger, angst. The bigness of feelings, embraced. Familiarity with oppression is normalized, to where I am chastised for any attempt to bring relief to mi gente by asking those in power to remove their heavy feet off our necks. But we keep asking, demanding, resisting, and flying.
Read MoreCommunity isn't just the physical neighborhood, homes, and streets - it's the people. Justice isn't just the laws, rules, and punishment - it's the treatment; it's how a community and society function and operate. For decades and even centuries, the United States has been working (and at many times struggling) to become more united. The idealism of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" written into the Declaration of Independence and the aim to be "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" from our school-aged pledges, are baked into this American Pie.
Read MoreLike Edmund, we ate the Turkish delight offered by the system, relying on their forms, processes, hoping thier procedural laws built to oppress us would do something other. Our stories cemented in stones, the scars on our skin, un-dead, and un-done.
Read MoreThere is no reason for my children, whether in Spanish or English, to find it necessary to use words meant to depict the power over another with their historical context of 400 years (because the majority Africans were trafficked to Latin America as well). Therefore, there are words that we know, within their historically significant context, but don’t speak directed at other humans.
Read MoreMichelle Obama says, “When they go low, we go high.” My dear African American colleague reminds me that supremacy creates a false dichotomy of the choices you have in a scenario – creating false equivalencies which are rarely true.
Read MoreNot Buffalo, or Irvine, Uvalde, or Jayland Walker’s story will shock us enough to change. The paddles which electrify our hearts, aren’t built for centuries of hardened callouses.
A painful peeling must begin to dig at the crust which keeps us from feeling the pain of our scars and our perpetration of violence. May we find pause, this July 4th – to create intentional anti-racist communities which feel and see and hear.
May we remember Stonechild Chiefstick.
Because, his life matters.
God doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t grow tired or weary. My burdens or the burdens of those I love are never too much for him.
Instead, Jesus invites us to allow him to carry all that weighs heavily on us.
Read More2020 is covered by a dark cloud of hopelessness. A cloud that threatens to suffocate us. A cloud that shows no signs of dissipating.
This overwhelming presence of hopelessness continues to creep toward us and pound on the door to our mind, body, and soul wanting us to give up and let it come pouring in.
Read MoreTime flies. And the formless, empty places of my heart, are a greater part, partially because I cannot find my heart. A heart where spaces feel empty – like before they were transformed.
Read MoreSo, you are asking what to do? Your eager to find hope? You’re rushing to grief?
Then, do the hard and bloody work of fighting for hope.
Repent. Repent. Repent.
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