Another light gone out

He left the day after Christmas. The father of eight was always devoted to the kids. I am sure he wanted to see them and all the grandchildren at Christmas and leave after that.

Of course, we won't really know because the dementia had taken his beautiful, loving mind a while ago. Gone were the days when he could read and write, savoring the turn of a phrase, the events of the days and the memories. All the memories were gone.

The house had always been a jumble of eight children, shouts, laughter, meals seated at long benches with powdered milk served with lots of love. Of course it wasn't just their kids, it was the friends, the cousins, the grandparents all those who were enveloped in the arms of this household.

There were the weddings, the coming out, the birth of babies, the graduations. There was the great tragedy when one of the grandchildren died at 16 months. All the chapters of a life, of a family, were all there in the house.

And now the gentle man with the kind eyes, the ready nicknames for all of us, the man who was always willing to listen and laugh, has left us on the day after Christmas. He was so considerate up to the end.

The hole is great in all our hearts, the ones he touched. The sorrow will be there for a long time because we won't see him again with the apron on in the kitchen, washing out all the big pans after making tamales, cooking up the ham for a feast to share. We won't hear his lovely laugh, nor be able to just say hi.

But he is with his grandson who left us too soon, with his beloved father who taught everyone to smoke cigars and be able to defend our opinions, he is with my father and petting my departed dogs. He has gone ahead now.

No more suffering, his mind has been restored in another place. He is holding his grandson, together again.

What a legacy to leave, so much love, so much laughter. So many hearts touched by his life. We know the world has a little less light with his passing. Thank you for your life well lived and loved.

From the front row in Kabul

This is a letter from a friend who is working in Kabul. She has an extraordinary view from where she sits.

Dear Glo,

Every year we spend billions of dollars working to restore a nation’s dignity, yet with that noble purpose we often fail to separate the needs of a people from the cultural wants of the west. With neither side receiving what it needs or what it wants. In turn we have created almost a vicious cycle of abusive giving that is comparable to force feeding a diabetic sugar or giving a bottle of vodka to an alcoholic. Our nation for its greatness is missing the point and the Afghan people who are dear to my heart continue to suffer because of it and the western need for instant gratification and the notion that money solves all problems continnues to fail.

This is not the fault of the men and women in uniform, the average Afghan going about their daily lives or even many of those involved in legitimate aid endeavors. Often it comes from pressure from large companies who use donor money to put their employees up in $20,000 dollar a month poppy-palaces with a security firm that carries an even larger price tag. Security people who tell everybody the sky is falling in order to keep their contracts and thus their jobs. These companies receive money that they must ‘burn’ in order to keep their contract. In many cases are talking about millions of dollars a day total.

Case in point the Afghan Supreme Court has a budget this year if I remember correctly of eight million United States Dollars it has only been able to burn nearly 800 thousand of that. One international donor wants to commit to 300 million over the next three years. Seriously, the court because of lack of capacity brought on by a thirty-year interruption in the education system does not have the capacity to absorb that amount much less burn it at the donors desired rate. If that 300 million was to be committed over the next thirty years that may be a more appropriate amount of time to allow the proper roll out and evolution of the judicial process. It would also give time for the educational system to catch and capacity to be slowly built. With this in mind using the current burn rate the west is trying to purchase three hundred years of judicial tradition in three years, to me that does not seem logical.

Western donors fail to look at their own history to guide them in the financial process of nation building. 200 years ago the United States was an even younger nation and it had its own set of issues that it has been trying even to this day resolve. The French and the Spanish at that time did not come in and try to retro fit and purchase our system. They for the most part left us alone to build our nation giving appropriate aid when needed and a cadre of well qualified and committed expertise. We need to stop trying the instant soup approach and realize that money builds roads, schools and utilities, but only the hard work and determination of people against advisories great and small truly build a nation.

We The People are frustrated and the Afghan people are frustrated. In order to help bring justice to the people of Afghanistan we must take a cold hard look at how we distribute aid. We must demand a break in the status quo of the apparatus of the major international donors first by looking at our own foreign aid distributer USAID and its underlying, unjust, and abusive funding and reporting polices. More small projects need our support where the Afghan people are involved and not subjugated to the agenda of large ‘ for profit aid organizations’ who are nothing but a front of the corporate machine. Paying off people only creates socio-economic disparities, humiliates the ones who have not and fuels insurgencies.

The aid must be long term because YES the people of Afghanistan need it but they need it for the next thirty years and in more careful and just amounts. Our role as a nations should be that of a steward and not of a company trying to hush the situation by throwing money at it.

Liberation for me

I need to liberate myself. I have been involved in liberation movements for the majority of my adult life – lgbt immigration, race, living wage. But today I need to liberate myself from me.

I am 55 years old. I have not had a job for the better part of the last three years so I have no more unemployment. The two federal legislators I talked to at netroots had no idea that there is a group of people who have run out of unemployment.

This terrifies me.

There are now people in the movement who are making gigundous amounts of money for work that I have done for free for decades. This pisses me off. I feel pushed to the side and all the work I have done amounts to nothing because a new generation apparently just invented activism. So all the lessons learned, battles won and lost mean nothing. We are pushed to the side, living in poverty and wondering what will come next. The streets, starvation, stress of unknown proportions?

The truth that liberates me though is this: there is nothing I can do about it. I am completely and totally powerless.

The movement will continue without me and others who have come before who have won and passed laws, won and made lives better, won and gave hope. I can’t do anything about it.

Except tell the truth.

I am afraid.

So with this confession, I have to say that whatever amount of money people are making in whatever large amounts those are, all of that is none of my business. When I get obsessed with what other people are doing it is because I am afraid for my own future and what will become of me. When I focus on others I don’t have to look at what has become of me.

But the truth is also that this hurts my feelings, a lot. I am friends with a lot of people around the country. It really makes me sad that so many things are happening and no one invites me and my peers anymore for our thoughts or ideas. I am old news, literally.

Those of us in the 50+ age range can’t get jobs, are losing all we have built up over the years and are struggling with the world as it has become. Nothing is fair. (Not that life ever was fair. When we lost so many of our brothers we were very clear that life wasn’t fair.)

So now that I am liberating myself, I hope to breathe a little easier, think a lot more about those around me and less on people and things that are none of my business.

In the meantime keep your fingers crossed that there are more jobs for people everywhere. All our ships will rise together.

From Netroots Nation

This includes a video taken by the folks who staged an action at lunch at Netroots one afternoon. The action was effective and showed an ugly side of the progressive movement that many of us know already, white privilege. The video includes lgbt people.

More of the same

On June 30, the Department of Labor released new, state-by-state numbers on how many workers have been cumulatively affected by Congress' inability to extend long-term unemployment benefits. As of July 3, an estimated 1.7 million workers will lose their benefits. If this drags on through July, a total of 3.2 million workers will lose their benefits. – Center for American Progress

Independence Day weekend is for many people a long, leisurely time off to enjoy the bounty of employment. Barbecues, going to the beach (if they are close enough), swimming, boating, picnics by water are all on the menu this holiday weekend. Maybe not so much for the millions of Americans like myself who are out of work and with no unemployment coming in the near future.

Millions of Americans, millions includes LGBT Americans with no safety net. As I have written before, this still includes me.

This is obviously a frustrating situation for the country and all the people affected by this hideous financial situation. Depression, anger, hopelessness are all obvious traits of the unemployed. Those around us are also impacted, watching family and friends struggling, creating an even larger sense of hopelessness and frustration.

I have spent some time looking at the considerable amount of information available about this Depression. (I am done saying it is a recession. Time to call it what it is, a depression.) I am not an economist but I am an unemployment statistic. I wonder if I am wondering if I fall in the “given up looking for work” category even though I look every day. But apparently large numbers of people fall into that category weekly because of the amount of time we are jobless.

This is the big light bulb for me about this depression. If people like me don’t have money, we can’t spend something we don’t have. Duh, right? But this impacts all the small businesses who usually create jobs because no one is spending money. Therefore they cannot hire people like me.

It is a seesaw. There is no balance where both parties sit level. It is seesaw that has stopped either seeing or sawing. It cannot move because as Krugman has pointed out, our Congress is full of “the coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused.”

These same people have the same attitude toward us as LGBT people in this country. They vote against us every chance they get, they have no desire to meet let alone befriend an lgbt person. And the confused, see Mormon Church, separation of church and state. Also thou shalt not lie.

And now this same administration who does not take the battle of the unemployed to the Congress to fight for us is doing the exact same thing for us as lgbt people, nada. Oh yes, there have been a couple of cocktail parties in the White House, a small media klatch for those who could afford to go to DC on short notice and an lgbt round table at Labor with no unemployed lgbt people present. Yup, that is a long list of token efforts. Well, not really.

Since Barack Obama was elected, I have lost my home, gone over a year without a job and now have no unemployment insurance, no income. I am on food stamps. More of this is coming without anyone breaking a sweat about it in the White House except for the fact that it is sweltering in DC right now. Fierce advocate? Not even.

So I am going to connect the dots that seem obvious to me. We are depending on the same people for our equal rights who have not come even close to providing the promise of this country. If we worked hard and made some contributions to our communities there would be an agreement of security when things went bad.

Thanks to “the coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused”, who all went home for bbq’s in their home states while leaving millions unable to pay their bills or maybe even eat, let alone barbecue, the anxiety level of all Americans went up.

Many moons ago when I worked at a non-profit in the barrio, a family came to us with their baby. The baby had a bread bag for a diaper because the family didn’t have money for diapers. They tried to give the baby to us because they were so sure their poverty would be the end of their baby. They loved this little girl so much they tried to give her to people who they though could take care of her.

I wept that day and I weep today thinking about how many families in this, the richest country in the world, can have a government that can be so heartless to leave us all without any hope.

Where is our President, he of the golden oratory but lack of drive? Where is the hope from the White House? Where is the pressure to deliver hope and equality from this administration? Missing in action.

I know what it looks like for a person to be working for our greater good. I haven’t seen it. I had such hope in 2008. Now all I have is hope that my food stamps come through this week.

An Open Letter to My Senators

May 2, 2010

Dear Senators Boxer and Feinstein:

My last unemployment check came the first week of April.

Yesterday I went out to talk to someone about some work and I could not find her. I almost ran out of gas trying to find her.

After putting a little bit of gas in my car so I could continue looking for work this week, I now have $7 left.

I have been unemployed for over a year. Despite what lots of nasty people say, I do not sit around waiting on that check to come. I have interviewed on numerous occasions only to finish second every time.

Maybe I am too old to work again, after all I have hit the magic number of 55 where apparently employers draw the invisible line. All my peers without work are experiencing the same phenomenon, we are all too old. Of course no one is going to come right out and create a law suit for themselves by admitting this.

However, look at the fastest growing age group and they we are. Friends in IT tell me they are terrified of losing their job if they have gray hair.

I make a lot of effort to give back to my community. Last weekend I volunteered with the local La Mesa Verde program to assist a family planting a garden in its back yard to produce their own healthy food.

But Senators, where is the understanding from Washington that so many people are hurting? We need another unemployment extension. It is time to act on our behalf, without fear, the same way we have to face each day, despite rejection after rejection.

We, the unemployed, are staring over a precipice, looking at loss after loss. Our homes gone, our lives destroyed through greed, avarice and an uncaring system that has spit us out as collateral damage, unneeded any longer. We need you to listen to the pain, the anguish. the cries of us weeping from all the loss.

That was me crying in my room last night, maybe you heard me? No one in DC seems to hear those moments of terror and pain and loss. Did someone hear us?

I was wondering what I was going to do on Monday with $7. Eat maybe? Probably not.

Perhaps someone could see into my room last night as I lay weeping on my floor, asking for someone to believe in.

Please do something to help. Really, our lives depend on you.

Sincerely,

Gloria

AZ part 1

“It is open season on the Latino community in Arizona. In Phoenix, Tucson, and across the state, people in Latino neighborhoods are afraid to leave their houses, afraid to be apart from their children for even a minute, and afraid to walk the streets because they feel their arrest on suspicion of being an undocumented immigrant could happen at any moment. It is a horrifying glimpse at what our future holds across the country if we continue down the path the Obama administration is leading us on immigration.” – Congressman Luis Gutierrez, Huffington Post

This election season has seen the return of the scourge of the Mexican immigrant, the identified source of all problems in the United States. The state of Arizona has seen fit to pass a clearly unconstitutional law giving law enforcement virtually unlimited power to question and detain any person they want, demanding ID’s birth certificates, green cards. The bill, SB 1070, while not signed by the governor yet, sits as a sword of Damocles over the head of the Latino community in Arizona.

So, can’t they do that anyway? Well, yes police should be able to question “suspicious” people, monitoring people with criminal records, acting suspiciously not just because that person is brown.

Law enforcement used to do the same things to gay and lesbian people many moons ago. There were the laws that prevented two people of the same gender from dancing together. We could not gather in places for socializing without fear of police raids. Anyone remember Stonewall? Our forefathers and foremothers always faced the threat of arrest for gathering in a public place.

Many of us sit at that intersection of being brown and queer. We are either immigrants, children of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants. In a country where grown men are parading around in wigs and funny hats, packing guns, with brown people the target of their concern and their guns it is absolutely a moral imperative that queers of all colors recognize this for the social justice issue it is.

We have been targeted by laws and elections, made to be the identified problem, the others, the outliers who don’t deserve equality nor civil rights. Latinos and queers, queers and Latinos, Latino/a queers, queer Latina/o we live outside the circle of normal people in the US.

We live in cities with Spanish names, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, El Paso, Santa Fe, San Jose, in a Spanish named state, California and Texas. We eat at restaurants where the staff is Latino/a, they wash our dishes, our cars and sometimes clean our houses.

The argument that undocumented people have broken the law and therefore cannot have a path to citizenship is a red herring. In years past, it was illegal for two people of the same gender to have sex. It was illegal to gather and dance together. And it is still legal to discriminate against us in our relationships, work and public accommodations in many states. We can make some people uncomfortable just by our presence. That doesn’t make us criminals. We are all the outliers.

For us as queer Latinos, it is our families in Arizona that are under attack. Since we all have different priorities and for many of us, this immigration battle in Arizona takes precedence over DADT or ENDA. Hopefully we can chew gum and be activists on many fronts all at once.

For us as queer people of this land, we have a history that many of us have drilled into our heads.

We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us.

Si se puede, egualidad en nuestras vidas.

Real lives in Arizona

I want to tell you another story. I want to tell you about my friend Greg who lives in Arizona. He works at a major university and moved there for love. He and his partner own a home, pay their taxes and are part of their community. Nice men, they have come to visit us and we had a rollicking time in Santa Cruz with them.

The Governor of Arizona doesn’t feel these two men should be equal citizens. One of her first acts as the new Governor was to take Domestic Partnership benefits away from state employees like my friend. They lose their combined insurance on Oct 1.

This is a problem to begin with for any family that loses insurance – but it is especially relevant to them because my friend’s partner has Alzheimer’s. And he is the one losing the insurance.

We cannot change who we are anymore than we can change our diseases. I distinctly remember a time when gay men were blamed for getting AIDS. It wasn’t that long ago. As the shrillness ramps up here and on the net, I will point out, that there are still people who think we should be able to change and therefore should change who we are. I can’t change being a Chicana anymore than I can change my queerness. Neither can my undocumented queer brothers and sisters change who they are.

This attempt at law, as it is written and passed now, will not survive the court challenges. This is a blatant move to bypass the constitution. In Sunday’s New York Times the point was obvious:

One night last week, Grant Woods, the former state attorney general, spent more than an hour on the telephone with Gov. Jan Brewer, a fellow Republican who was considering whether to sign into law the nation’s toughest immigration enforcement bill.

The governor listened patiently, Mr. Woods recalled, as he laid out his arguments against the bill: that it would give too much power to the local police to stop people merely suspected of being illegal immigrants and would lead to racial profiling; that some local police officers have been abusive toward immigrants; and that the law could lead to costly legal battles for the state.

When he hung up, Mr. Woods knew he had lost the case. “She really felt that the majority of Arizonans fall on the side of, Let’s solve the problem and not worry about the Constitution,” he said.

The same people who passed that immigration law, took away DP benefits.

There are queers among the undocumented who had to leave in a hurry because they are gay. There are people from the US who are in relationships with undocumented people.

LGBT groups, cities, human rights commissions all over the country are mobilizing a boycott of Arizona.

Many people in the country think of us as LGBT people as freaks, less than equal, illegal. If we were all legal and equal we wouldn’t need to protest inequalities like DADT, ENDA, adoption laws, gay bashings. We are all the “others”, we are the outliers that continue to be unequal.

Sacrificing our souls

His name is Stephen McCarthy.

He was a classmate at St Justin's Catholic school from the 4th to the 6th grade. His hair was red and he had loads of freckles. His face was a virtual map of Ireland. I am sure his parents sent him him to Catholic school to get a good education. They didn't send him there, I am guessing, to be paddled in front of his 49 classmates every year.

Last night I lay awake thinking about my classmate. The look on his face when he was ordered to the front of the classroom. When he had to bend over so the nun could take a PADDLE to his butt, the back of his legs. The tears in his eyes, the red of his face all on display for the rest of us. The message was clear. Don't mess with the teachers or this will happen to you.

This physical and spiritual violence is not the same as being sexually molested. It is not the same level of disturbing behavior. I don't pretend to make them equivalent. But ask yourself this, if this was your child, would you allow a teacher to touch them in any way like this? Would you deem it acceptable that your son or daughter was marched to the front of the classroom and told to bend over to get whacked?

Last night I cried as I remembered the pain of Stephen and so many others who were taught through a church hierarchy that allowed nuns and priests to behave in any way they wanted. Out.Of.Control. Protected by god and the greatest religious institution on the planet to be virtually infallible.

well they are not infallible, they are barely human. In 2008 the Church involved itself in the Prop 8 vote. I am baptized Catholic but I didn't count in that vote. It was about the married couples I would terrorize in the church with my, I don't know cooties. I keep hearing how this is about protecting the sacred institution of marriage. Funny, I thought the confessional was a sacred place and confession was a sacred institution. Now the revelations in Wisconsin show the offending priest who was never held accountable by the Vatican, violated children in the confessional. I guess some things are more sacred than others and some priests are more disgusting than others.

Look around the globe and see how many children have been fathered by priests. So much for that celibacy thing. How about the former archbishop of New Mexico who fathered a child and placed known pedophile priests throughout New Mexico after completion of their "pray away the problem" treatments in NM. When asked by a grand jury why he had allowed the pedophiles to remain priests and placed them throughout a mostly rural, Catholic state the answer was priceless. Apparently he was of the understanding that an abortion or hitting a priest was a bigger sin than pedophilia.

Once again, during the supposed holiest week of the year, the Vatican seeks to portray its victims as liars. The children it abused (now there are allegations of flogging by priests visited on children) have bravely stepped forward to tell their truth. Once again the old familiar claim that they are making it up from the Prada clad types in Rome.

If you are witnessing a massacre, people being hurt and maimed in front of your eyes, would you not want to save the children? The Vatican has answered that question, they are trying to save themselves.

My family is still waiting for that apology from the 1968 slapping of my sister. I am not holding my breath.

Stephen McCarthy if you ever read this, I am sorry for not trying to stop the abuse. You didn't deserve it. None of us did. We were just kids.

Enough!!!!

Warning!!! If you think the Pope is infallible, don't read this. If you think the church is being attacked for its inability to protect children in its care, don't read this.

I went to a Catholic school in Santa Clara, Ca. So did my siblings. My sister was pulled out of that Catholic school the day after she slapped by a nun in front of her entire class. The nun then told the entire class they could not tell their parents what happened. Violence followed by an order from a nun to lie.

She was in public school the next day. I remained in the same school simply because I was a few weeks away from graduating from the eighth grade. Thankfully, many of her classmates did not obey the order to lie to the their parents and the phone was ringing that night with parents calling to talk to my parents about the violence my sister suffered in public that day.

Now I see the church has enlarged its ability to violate children. Not that this has been a big secret for a long time. But each day over the last few weeks we continue to see the centuries old pattern of the catholic church. Blame the victims, absolve the church members. I find it ironic that with the current Pope a German they have responded with a classic Nuremberg defense.

I find the violations visited on the 200 boys at a school for the deaf to be particularly revolting. No one believed them then that a priest was violating them in every way imaginable, even in the confessional. Yet, it is the child, now an adult, who is at fault. One deaf man, in particular, continues to stand brave in the face of attacks. Arthur Budzinski continues to ask for answers and accountability. In sign language. I applaud his bravery and commitment to telling his truth.

All of these secrets, lies and obfuscation are vulgar, in my mind. Having gone through the process of receiving all the sacraments, including the little slap on the cheek for confirmation, I will continue to believe in what I was taught in Catholic school. Lying is wrong. Cheating is wrong. Our jobs are to feed the poor, clothe the unclothed and act as if being a child of God means you act with integrity and honor. I don't see that coming from the Vatican nor did I see that from St Justin's school in the 1960's.

That is a span of over 40 years. What will it take for the Vatican to be accountable to its "flock" and really take care of the children and not just its power?

The only time I will return to the church will be for a relative's funeral. Until then (and I hope it is a really long time) I will follow the teaching to help those who need help. To bring kindness into the world and see the work of a spirit greater than myself in the animals, flowers and people who seek peace in the world.

BTW, Jesus never said a word about gayness so I am going to keep telling the truth of my life.

The World has changed, again.

I have added a correction, in bold to a comment Speaker Perez made about repealing Prop 8. This is my mistake and not him walking back anything.

The world has significantly changed this week for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population. Some significant events to note:

Wedding licenses were issued to same sex couples in Washington D.C.

Mexico City allowed same sex marriages to begin there.

John Perez was sworn in as Speaker of the California State Assembly, the first openly gay person to occupy this top of the food chain position not only in California but in the country. Add the Latino part and you have a Latino gay man leading the Cal Assembly.

The world has changed.

In a conference call on Tuesday, Speaker Perez talked with LGBT media about his priorities as Speaker this year. He obviously is making efforts to make the Assembly more transparent by limiting texting while lawmakers are on the floor.

Education is a priority for him and he wants to take advantage of his new positions on the UC Regents board as well as sitting on the CSU board of Trustees to review fiscal policies and the impact of those policies on students. Rising tuitions and over crowded classrooms have a significant impact on the accessibility of all California students to advanced studies.

Today (Thursday) there are statewide protests by students regarding these very issues. Speaker Perez (that looks so awesome) is concerned about the breadth and depth of financial resources available and what cuts will mean to grants such as CalGrants for students in California.

Also among his priorities in the upcoming budget he said "AIDS is a real priority for me." He did lead the charge last year against the Governor’s attempts at cuts that turned out to be illegal. With the Governor having slashed all prevention money, the Speaker will be coming to the budget talks with a different set of priorities this year. He said this will be a "new relationship with the Governor."

The world has changed. A gay Latino is leading the Assembly.

When queeried about his position on repealing Prop 8, the Speaker was unflinching in his analysis. He felt "there was no practical way to overturn Prop 8 this year." The lack of signatures and funding were fatal to any efforts this year.

In terms of the past Prop 8 campaign, he said that all the Latino electeds were on board with us. All his colleagues in Southern California supported the No on 8 campaign. We must "invest in education" and talk to people we didn’t talk to last time, Latinos, African Americans, working people.

Speaker Perez feels the ultimate solution to the problems plaguing California is to work in greater coalition. "We must invest in a broader approach" to coalition work and problem solving.

Many moons ago, my family, my Latino community was very excited about the new world that awaited them, not working in fields, getting educations for themselves and their children, having people represent us in different places. When well known singer Eydie Gorme started singing older Mexican songs with the famous Trio Los Panchos on the Ed Sullivan Show, we knew we had arrived. A real star was embracing her roots and singing in our language. No hiding, no changing the subject about Mexican roots but luxuriating in her browness.

I won’t say Speaker John Perez is the Latino LGBT Eydie Gorme (wait I just said it!) but it is a big ceiling that he has cracked. And just like Pete Wilson said, "They just keep coming and coming." You betcha, si se puede, adelante we are right behind you John!

The world has changed for the better..

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nieto/detail?blogid=94&entry_id=58456#ixzz0j8M5IslT

Someone Didn't Get the Memo, Meg

I watched the 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock news while wading through seed catalogues. Besides the usual depressing murders, unemployment and impending educational cuts was the story of Meg Whitman's tour of Southern Pacific train yards at the Port of Oakland.

This was not your usual press gaggle following a candidate on a tour of a key component of California's economy. No this was in fact a punishment of the media. While the press had been told they were going to go on the tour with the candidate, they were in fact, sequestered because of an apparent break out of cooties as determined by MEGabucks' staff.

The media were put in a holding room for, hmmmm, two hours? Then she had a sit down with Mr Southern Pacific but wouldn't take questions. WHAT???? Why invite the media???

As I said, someone did not get the memo on campaigns. In the film last night, Whitman's campaign people were scolding the media for asking questions as if the press,who I will remind again,were invited to this, were still cootie covered and must be rushed out the door lest the contamination spread to those who would rule one of the largest economies in the world.

In October I heard Madeline Albright say "The hottest places in hell are for women who don't help other women." So rather than disappointing all those nuns who put so much effort into disciplining my sister and I, I will offer some unasked for advice. No hot place in hell for this gal.

Madam Candidate, I have no idea why you want to be governor of California. I am also at a point where I don't care why. What ideas you have offered as a cure all for this debacle we are living in except to cut the size of government? As if this has not already been done by everyone. And that is what we need, more unemployed.

The memo should say that you must go out and find out what people need. Your ideas must be conveyed in an adult manner, not preceded by nannernannernanner, Steve Poisner has cooties.

So I will point out this campaign is your job interview. So far you seem to have no grasp on what the issues are for the millions of people in this state who are struggling, having to make a decision between food and medicine, wondering if they will ever get a paycheck again. We will be the ones voting in November and guess what??? This may come as a surprise to both you and your staff but my vote counts the same as yours. My sister, my mom, my aunt, my neighbors all those people you are ignoring, we all have one vote. Funny, that democracy.

That lame apology on tv last night too, when you were sorry that the event didn't turn out the way you thought it would, well it was lame. Who is in charge at your campaign then? Aren't you? If you are not, who is in charge, let me talk to them. Remember this is your interview.

Looks like you are as qualified to run the state as I am to run ebay. Neither of us have the experience to do a good job.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nieto/detail??blogid=94&entry_id=58854#ixzz0j8LeLpkT

Show me what real faith looks like

I am a recovering Catholic. I have survived every sacrament, five years of Catholic school, numerous Catholic funerals and the brutal regimens of wearing a uniform, overseen by strict nuns who were not averse to using physical punishment.

My sister was yanked out of school one day after a nun pulled her and another child to the front of the classroom and slapped them both right across the face. Then the entire class was told they could not tell anyone what had just happened. Naturally my mom got a number of calls that night from other parents upset about what happened. She was out of uniform the next day and at the public school.

As an institution designed to provide spiritual guidance, the Catholic Church has had some horrific failures. Looking back over the years we can see the Crusades, the Inquisition, the colonialization of the American west with its subjugation of American Indians. In recent history, the proliferation of pedophile priests without any Church intervention has caused not only loss of millions of dollars but also a loss of spiritual leadership.

In Spanish, there is a phrase, sin verguenza, which literally translates to “without shame.” The Catholic Church has become a sin verguenza. After all this history of untold pain and suffering they have entered new territory of creating the same kind of pain for gays and lesbians through the electoral process.

After the loss of Prop 8 in California, it was revealed that the current archbishop of San Francisco, George H. Niederauer, began this plot against gay people. In previous work as a priest, Niederauer was in Utah and formed relationships with his Mormon brethren. From this unholy alliance sprung Prop 8.

We know the outcome of this effort. Then the spawn of Prop 8 in Maine, Question 1, appeared with the same antagonists, same ending. Now the Catholics have thrown a big tantrum in Washington D.C. saying they will pull themselves away from their $10 million dollars worth of contracts to feed and house the poor, if, gasp, the District allows gay marriage. This recovering Catholic cannot help but wonder if they had spent half as much energy dealing with their flock of pedophiles how many lives would have been spared?

A few years back during my time in New Mexico, there was a huge controversy between the Church and the arts community in Santa Fe.

When we had first moved there, the controversy at that time was the grand jury testimony of the Archbishop of Albuquerque. The holy man had fathered a child with a parishioner and had full knowledge of the rampant pedophilia occurring in northern New Mexico.

In fact, a high number of priests who were known pedophiles were sent to pray their way out of this problem at a retreat in the Jemez mountains. When they were “cured” they were released to do the lord’s work in New Mexico with the Archbishop’s blessing. I bet you know what happened then.

The Archbishop testified to the grand jury that, yes, he knew about these problems. But he thought that hitting a priest and having an abortion were greater sins.

(A brief background is here from the NY Times.)

Now with this as a backdrop, an exhibit comes to Santa Fe with this picture in it. It is a representation of the Virgin of Guadalupe. She is a mestiza, brown skinned woman in all representations, who showed herself to a Mexican Indian. Long considered the patron saint of the Americans, some of the locals went nuts.

That’s a polite way of saying it.

The artist, Alma Lopez, is a lesbian living in Los Angeles. The fact that a lesbian would put bare breasts in a picture of the Virgin made some people apoplectic. She had threats made to her life. The curator of the show, Tey Marianna Nunn, was set upon by the mobs in Santa Fe as if she were Frankenstein and the mobs had pitchforks and torches. There were community forums, people who had known each other all their lives stopped talking to each other. There were out in the open brawls between men and women, traditionalists v progressives. Many lives were threatened.

Myself, I tried to instigate a few counter protests. If there were attempts to shut down the exhibit, CyberArte: Tradition Meets Technology, the feminists would chain ourselves to the front door and then take our tops off as a sign of solidarity. OK, not everyone thought the topless part was such a good idea.

In December of that year, I went to Mexico, to the border city of Ciudad Juarez, for the feast day of the Virgin, Dec 12. I had heard about this event for years and finally drove down to see it.

What I saw in Mexico were true expressions of faith and commitment to her service by thousands of people. I am sure I was the only one in the Plaza that night who even knew Alma Lopez or cared about her art. What was important was their faith in her.

Reverential looks, lips moving in silent prayer, many groups dancing to show their devotion to the Goddess of the Americas on her special day. People sat in the Cathedral for hours until the midnight hour so they could sing “Las Mañanitas” , our version of Happy Birthday. What was controversy for men who wear hats with the Virgin on it was irrelevant to these faithful.

So as the Catholic Church in DC continues to weep and wail and gnash its teeth, I wonder how the poor, the homeless, those suffering who the church is supposed to be serving, how do they feel that they are about to be tossed out because of some unknown gay and lesbian people who want their rights. Seems like another overreaction to me.

But then I don’t know how I could expect anything different from men who plotted for years to attack us over our marriages and thought a picture was more important than true belief and acts of faith. After all I am a recovering Catholic. We have been slapped too many times by this church. That won’t stop me from performing real acts of kindness. It shouldn’t stop any of us from showing our kindness and having a generosity of spirit.

Catholics (and Mormons) may think they are blocking our way but ultimately our acts of faith – faith in our cause, faith in ourselves – will get us to the finish line as equal citizens. Yes we have had setbacks but we haven’t lost our faith.

Artist Alma Lopez has her own blog and says her new married name Alma Lopez Gaspar de Alba. She writes that:

Alicia and I are working on editing a publication of essays titled Our Lady of Controversy: Alma Lopez’s Irreverent Apparition. Please read more about the Our Lady image and the controversy on my website at http://www.almalopez.com or http://www.almalopez.net. Either address leads you to the same site.

If you are an artists (or if you know an artist, please forward) who has created an image using the icon of the Virgen of Guadalupe, please submit your work for consideration to be included in the DVD which will accompany this book.

This publication with DVD will be published by the University of Texas Press (Chicana Matters Series) in the Fall of 2010.

Elizabeth Edwards helped my breaking heart

While living in New Mexico, I heard many folk stories. Tales of emergence, creation stories, even UFO sightings. One in particular has always had a profound impact on me, the story of Apache tears.The story says that some Apaches were all lost in a battle with the colonizers. The men were all killed. When the women found out they had lost all the men, they cried such pure tears of grief, the gods were so moved they captured the tears and made them into the stones, the Apache tears. So now we are witness to the tears of the Apache women and their grief. Today there are Apache tears from Maine all across the country.

Grief, such a small word for feelings that can swallow a life.

At Maria Shriver’s Women’s Conference in Long Beach, Ca, on October 27th, a panel of women who look from the outside that they have rich, fulfilled lives, opened themselves to 15,000 participants to talk about their own grief.

Maria Shriver, the First Lady of California, moderated the panel. Elizabeth Edwards, a mother who lost her teenage son in a car accident, Lisa Niemi, Patrick Swayze’s widow and actress Susan St James who also lost a teenage son in a plane accident, talked honestly and emotionally about their grief.

The lessons are many, especially for us in the LGBT community. Each woman spoke about the challenges of facing a life without their children, husband and mother. How does one accept a life when the calls no longer come from your mother or that you will no longer see your child? How does one face a husband who has cheated on you and that the entire country knows what he has done?

For us, how do we live our lives when we have been told we are second-class citizens time and time again? How do we face a day having lost our partners, our brothers and sisters to an early death from a disease no one seems to care about any more?

The grief they talked about was so overwhelming, I felt paralyzed listening to the discussion. That gut wrenching, soul suffocating pain of loss had taken over my life in the past six weeks. I had no idea until I heard my pain being described by these women and realized I had curled up into a ball and let the pain take over everything.

Since the defeat of Proposition 8 in November, 2008 I have felt completely overwhelmed with grief. It wasn’t just my shove into second-class citizenship, it was loss of a job, then the loss of our house and the loss of a beloved dog. All the loss, the soul searching for a reason to get up in the morning that had become my life for weeks at a time.

Now we can add Maine to that list. We are now second-class, non-human beings in this country where our rights are voted on. The tyranny of the majority willingly believes the lies told by church after church both in California and Maine. Look at where the money for these campaigns comes from? Here is the link to the Maine money reports. http://www.mainecampaignfinance.com/public/entity_financial_transactions.asp?TYPE=BQC&ID=4528

Here is the link for the Prop 8 donors. http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/prop8/

So our community continues to be grief stricken and doing what to help our broken hearts? Some want to march, some want to go organize to go back in 2010 for another election. (I do not support that idea in anyway shape or form.)

Elizabeth Edwards said with such clarity that if one does not heal one’s self internally all the grief will come out sideways – as rage, anger or other behavior that is not good either for ourselves or the people we care about.

I wonder, can we heal ourselves after these defeats? Can we treat each other well? Can we say to the people in Maine, you did a magnificent job and here is my hand so I can help you up when you are ready? And get up we must. Probably not today, maybe not tomorrow but at some point we must get up. Elizabeth Edwards, a woman with stage 4 cancer, offered her hand to me, a total stranger, and helped me get up to fight another day. Betsy Smith, can I offer you my hand when you are ready to get up? Can all of us do that when the chance comes to comfort another?

Maybe not but I promise we make ourselves better people when we have compassion and show our generosity of spirit. We can all help heal each other in this small way.

Of course we will win someday. I remember asking Del Martin once about why she would work on marriage if she may not see marriage in her lifetime. It was always about the people coming behind her, “I’m doing it for them.” Del beat the clock by two months, she died married to Phyllis Lyon. No one can take that away. Del had faith in the movement, in all of us, to keep getting back up and keep going to the end. I think I made that same promise to Elizabeth Edwards. Maybe not in so many words but in my heart, I promise to keep going. Grab my hand and we’ll walk this path together. Maybe we will pick up a few on the way! I'll be the one with Apache tears in my pocket.

Check these out

Haven't been blogging much here lately. I am now on the SF Chronicle, Bilerico and LGBTPOV
I will continue to pop in here and submit other original work.

Remembering 9/11

Today is a sad day in the annals of this country. Eight years ago we lost so many Americans which led to losing so many more Americans in a war started on lies, pomposity and subterfuge. I better be careful or Sarah Palin will start calling me out on her Facebook page. I'm white with fear.

On November 4, 2008, 16,000 people went into legal limbo because we had gotten married after the California Supreme Court said we could stay married but no one else could join our country club.

These two moments in history are related because of Alice Hoagland. We all met Alice the day she came to the rally in downtown San Jose the Saturday after the election. She was wearing a picture button of her son, Mark Bingham, a gay man who was on the United flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania. Alice took the mic that day and talked about her loss, our loss of a man named Mark who helped stop that flight from crashing into the White House or the Capitol.

Alice is an amazing woman, exactly the kind of mom we may all have wanted at some time in our lives. She has thrown herself full bore into the causes Mark believed in-LGBT equal rights, air safety and rugby. Whenever we have meetings about events and planning, Alice is with us offering heartfelt, smart opinions.

She knows our lgbt history better than most people I know. She has brought her mother's heart to our battle and will not be silenced about her loss and our loss of Mark. Alice has been walking this path with us and offering her strength to get us through the losses and set backs.

The government sent her to Guantanamo to witness the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohamed. She described her trip as seeing the face of evil in front of her. Alice was quoted on the front page of the New York Times from her time in Guantanamo. This is no shrinking violet!

Today is the anniversary of her loss. Our country's loss, the LGBT community's loss and a reminder that we can all be heroes when the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, Mark's heroism cost him his life.

His mother carries on for him. Alice is a great woman, a true partner in the struggle for equality. I wish I had never met her and that her son was among us, living a fulfilled life. That wasn't Mark Bingham's story though. He gave us the gift of his mother instead.

I wish I had met Mark while he was among us. I am certainly grateful for his gift of Alice. Please take a moment today and remember Mark and all the others who lives ended tragically today. Please remember their families, the people who love them and the pain they have today as a reminder of that dark day.

Please remember the bright lights that remain among us carrying their sorrow in so many hidden ways. Their pain is our pain, we remain a country wounded but still surviving.

Thank you Mark for your sacrifice. Thank you Alice for all you do and who you are to all of us.

California

I got married on August 30, 2008 during the summer of love. My one year anniversary is coming up soon. Our 20 year anniversary is on August 14. Most of that time we have lived in California, with a decade in New Mexico.

I did all my growing up in California, schools, drinking, getting arrested, getting sober, getting politically active and educated. From the really bad days of AIDS to Prop 187 and now Prop 8, I have struggled in the trenches to do the right thing to win at the ballot box.

Let me be clear now. I am not and have not been part of the “leadership” in California even though I have a strong, experienced background in the science of elections. There was no Latino leadership in the November election aside from that provided by mi hermanos in LA, HONOR PAC. I do not fall into the scorned category of “those people” who have been in charge.

Trying to be a cool chick all the time, I have been riding the wave of the recession for a couple of years now, few jobs, lots of unemployment. My spouse and I are in the process of losing the house we were married in. After four months, I have gotten my first unemployment check. I do not have the resources to go to meetings for a weekend in a place as far away as San Bernadino. At 54 I also will not tolerate heat and, trust me, being cooped up in a hot room for hours is a recipe for an arrest.

At this point I am writing this because I want to make some observations about the strong disagreements in the LGBT community in California. It is truly irresponsible for me to not say something at this point and try to bring my point of view from where I live.

One of the key issues that I continue to see is the total unwillingness to listen to each other. This next campaign is supposed to be about changing hearts and minds among the electorate. Yet in meeting after meeting we do not listen well to each other and from that springs growing animosity towards other LGBT people. So without these skills how in the hell are we supposed to listen to the California electorate who does not agree with us right now?

Does anyone truly think that by just showing up on people’s doorsteps they will welcome us in and want to hear our stories? These conversations require the ability to listen to other people’s beliefs and not just maintain a superior attitude that we know best how people should vote. Do we magically take the place of their clerics or their religious community?

What is even more important is that vast numbers of people do not know us. In the Latino community, it is necessary to spend time with us to gain any measure of trust. That means going to different events, sharing some values with us, like is poverty or immigration an issue for us too. If it is, prove it.

Ask yourself when was the last time you publicly supported an issue where you had nothing to gain? Support for immigration reform? March for Iranian freedom? What have we all done to work for other causes? I will give a shout out here for Courage Campaign who does a great job of working on the multiple issues that we face as progressives.

But really, can we back up a little here? A lot of paens I have read about going in 2010 have not dealt at all with the issue of people of color in California. Just in case you missed the demographics on the Golden State, we are a majority minority state. The majority of people in California are minorities, primarily Latino. So to have these opinions completely skip over the statement made by people of color organizations, the Prepare to Prevail, does not take into full account the true demography here.

In Karen Ocamb’s blog post at the Bilerico Project about the San Bernadino meeting, she quotes at least two participants wanted to ignore the African American and Latino communities in the next votes. That’s a good idea - don’t deal with a significant part of the state. Wouldn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable now.

We must engage everyone in this next battle. Communities of color are saying there is not enough time to do this for a 2010 vote. Does anyone really think we don’t want our full equality? But what happens if we lose again? Who gains from that?

My community, the Latino community must be engaged in this vote if we are to win true equality. We know what discrimination is and we don’t like it. There was polling a few years back about marriage in the Latino community. It was done all over the country in both Spanish and English. The results were the same, when discrimination was described to the participants, we totally understood what it meant. Doesn’t anyone want us to do this task properly? Then give us the needed time to do it!

I have one more thing to mention. There is now an attempt to put another anti-immigrant measure on the 2010 ballot. In the same way we were used as political piñatas in 2008, so will the brown people be used next year. The same people will be involved voting against civil rights of another group of people.

In the last election over Prop 187, we lost. In the aftermath we discovered there were 5 million people in California who were eligible to become citizens and had not done so yet. The effort is going on now to make sure we have gotten all eligible people in California ready to be citizens by November 2010. The battle was ugly, racist, a pitched battle for the soul of the state. The voters believed all the lies about what immigration was “costing” us the same way they believed the lies about us.

Whether we like it or not, there are many unpleasant conversations in the future. Unpleasantries with our families, our co-workers, our neighbors are coming. We should be able to turn to each other to support in the days ahead. But the name calling, insults, the demands of “my way or the highway” campaigning or the covert and overt racism does not make that unity possible. If we cannot trust each other, who can we trust.

I have many beefs with the way the last campaign was run. I have called people out in public for their mean spirited behavior. I may forgive but I won’t forget. I also won’t make the same mistakes twice like allowing the Latino community to be ignored the next time. So don’t get me wrong since I consistently can’t get a job with these campaigns despite my abilities, I will find a way to get around the road blocks. I also will not be insulted and degraded for being a grass roots person of color who worked on the No on 8 campaign.

But I will listen and agree on some arguments being made for 2010. I also don’t think it should be too hard to practice listening to each other and finding a way to do this without hurting each other. We have to find a way to lean on each other otherwise we are not a movement but kids who don't play well with each other.

The test is here let's make this a movement.

Sanford and puns

Iraq continues to be a bloody quagmire. Check out HuffPo and Nico Pitney's live blogging there. Andrew Sullivan continues to bring updates also. I feel so sick inside watching the videos from Iraq. But seeing what real bravery and commitment to democracy looks like makes me want to support the Iraqi people even more. Especially the women that are leading this effort.

In the meantime, another Republican is added to the hypocrisy list. The guy who didn't want stimulus money, which, as Ana Marie Cox has pointed out, has a whole new meaning, apparently ran off to Argentina to do the tango mattress dance with his mistress. Here is a good little parody of his lies about where he was.

Repeat after me

The revolution in Iran is not about the US. Not one bit. Not even a hint. Time for everyone to get over the USitis and recognize shit happens in the world that is not about us.

Plenty to Be Proud About

The rainbow flags are up on Market street. The excitement builds til next weekend with the patented Dyke March and Pink Saturday leading up to one of the most massive Pride parades on the face of the earth. This is fun for lots of people. Not so much for me.

It's not that I don't love a good parade. I revel in the tractor parade at the Santa Cruz Fair every year. The neighborhood Fourth of July is fun, too. But here's the problem for me, I am, in a politically correct sort of way, vertically challenged. Translation: I'm short, damn short.

So it becomes impossible to see much around all the very tall people there. They certainly do not see me and I have had way too much beer splashed on me over the years, followed by the "Oops, didn't see you" refrain. I don't drink alcohol so getting beer accidentally spilled on me isn't much fun.

But I noted that this week is Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin's wedding anniversary. They were married as the first couple in California in City Hall by the handsome mayor. The pack of people in the room was just filled with excitement at seeing this piece of our history in front of our eyes. It was even funny for us menopausal types trying to shed jackets as the room heated up from bodies dealing with hormones.

Outside, there were hundreds of people celebrating this moment. Additionally there were ugly, hateful signs decrying what was happening inside. I kept thinking, why this level of hate against two eighty year old women who just want their relationship recognized after 55 years. How does this hurt anyone?

Before all you biblically correct people start the bleating about different opinions and religious freedom, I dare you to tell me one thing these women did to hurt you? Yes, you personally so that you and your followers were so enraged that you had to run up the steps of City Hall as we walked in to scream hateful speech at us? Jewelle, you had the perfect response and then kept right on going to our date with history. Thank you.

I have my current issue of Us Weekly magazine here by my side. The cover is classic. Makes my point completely about all these fallacies about the sanctity of marriage. The four headlines on the cover :"Adam comes out gay." "Jon cheated on her birthday." "Heidi Pratt-Tears, Lies and Torture," and "Ashlee and Pete Marriage in Crisis." Guess who looks the happiest? Yep, Adam the gay guy from American Idol.

So next time you have the desire to do something that preserves the sanctity of marriage, here's some suggestions: Senator John Ensign, Senator Larry Craig, Congressman David Vitter and that towering testimony to hypocrisy and cheating, Newt Gingrich. Wait, I almost forgot Rush and his three wives. Go talk them. The rest of us want to just get on with our lives. Not to mention going back to the ballot box because that is our right. Whether you like it or not.

Posted By: Gloria Nieto (Email) | Jun 18 at 10:22 AM