citlalli's world

do we sleep safer tonight?

watchastheempirefalls — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:37:23 +0000

tonight, i was in the close proximity of the first homicide of the year. when the show let, and we filed out, i shoved my hands in my pockets, and peered momentarily into the depths of a black alley.

does it make me aware or paranoid? to see potential dangers? is it fear or caution?

either way, it looks as if the prime suspect in the barrera murder has been found. its not for certain… but a routine suicide call might have found the serial predator, a former military veteran.

ima light a candle tonight.

where black and brown collide

watchastheempirefalls — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:29:59 +0000

so i went with a friend of mine to attend a networking event… she likes taking me bc i dont make a scene, i can be polite, i have good manners, and people really take a liking to me. so we went to schulz’ beer garden.

we sat down, at the table with everybody, and began talking to the man next to us. he asked what i did. i told him about the austin black & brown alliance. he grimaced and said, oh thats tough. yeah… i dont know if that can be fixed.

he asked a couple of other questions, and talked about how puerto ricans hated mexicans even though they share a common language (to which c-lo charmingly quipped just because people speak english doesnt mean they get along), and he compared certain behaviors of Black folks in the past to KKK rituals. i kept trying to get the attention of the waitress. i hate beer, but i needed a drink. she ignored me, so i turned to my other side to speak to the women next to me. i spoke to one lady for about 20 minutes, then asked what she was affiliated with. _________ counseling. then it dawned on me. oh, i said. im sorry. thats okay, she said. you were out of context. out of environment. its okay. hi how are you?

it was my counselor of 3 months from last year. awkward.

i felt under the microscope for the rest of the time i was there. i went back to the man. he asked me if i had seen the movie the help. thats a good movie, he said. its about race relations, and overcoming barriers.

i never watched it, but i know what its about, and have read reviews of the book. here is a good indicator of why i stiffened at his suggestions:

She decides (with the assistance of a publisher) that she wants to reveal the truth about being a colored maid in Mississippi. Skeeter struggles to communicate with the maids and gain their trust.

oddly enough, stockett knew “a colored maid” who sued her for stealing her experiences.

i got my woodchuck cider, slumped in my chair, and fell into my world. its all i can do sometimes.

lets start a school for ethnic studies… and popular education. lets give our kids a chance.

watchastheempirefalls — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:05:21 +0000

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.” – Cesar Chavez

we all have the education, the experience, the vision. lets make a school for the people.

watchastheempirefalls 2011 in review

watchastheempirefalls — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:43:38 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,600 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

past against present

watchastheempirefalls — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:30:59 +0000

this week just gets weirder and weirder. my poetry manuscript “fell out” of a secured envelope. my girlfriend is headed to hondoras & el salvador when even the peace corps has been evacuated…. somebody was in bianca’s apartment and broke one of her plants (though we suspect its her sister we arent sure), and her mom started talking about tears in the 3rd and 4th dimensions. a rapist & murderer is on the loose in austin. a guy i know from cherrywood got mugged in cherrywood at the crack of midnight. i had a guy arrested for lewd comments on monday night. one of my regular customers called me an incognito revolutionary the other day. he even suggested i might end up leaving the country one day because of exile.

and im kind of like… wait what?

anyway… something more tangible than my paranoia (thats what i get for watched 28 days later last night).

legendary (and infamous) Penn state coach jo pa died of cancer. the other night, on our way to bernadette’s, ricardo, nnenna, amy, and i got into a discussion about him and his legacy. amy graduated from penn state, and her brothers were in the athletic program during jo pa’s tenure as AD. i told them about columnist (black sportswriter) jason whitlock’s observation on jo pa… that though he had a 99% noble legacy, he would be remembered for the 1% genovese syndrome. a heated discussion ensued about whether it was fair to look at his body of work versus his one (in)action.

i know that as people, we all make mistakes. we are not perfect. we are just human, after all. but to live your life and present your life as being righteous and virtuous, and then to stand aside, knowing an atrocity is happening and that you have the power to change that atrocity, is unforgiveable. you will go down without that legacy. that you averted your eyes while sandusky commited acts against children (in your fucking building), under your nose… thats not something that even cancer can erase.

our past will catch up with our present, in one way or another.

clear the room

watchastheempirefalls — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 07:53:55 +0000

it does not matter to me whether you are a man, a woman, a gay, a trans, a whatever. a sleaze is a sleaze, in any gender.

not bad

watchastheempirefalls — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:39:42 +0000

today my boss gave me the reviews with some complaints about AJ. he made it sound like we were terrible. i went to yelp, and the last bad review was from last summer.

im just saying.

are you thinking of me too?

watchastheempirefalls — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:33:13 +0000

hey guapa.

i hope so.

with that fire engine red selena like lipstick that brings out the rosiness in your cheeks and the brightness in those blue eyes. even if it makes no fucking sense, since the moment we sat in your car in cristina’s driveway and you told me that you loved me, i have been in love with you.

have a safe trip to new mexico.

on a trip to the zoos of ecuador

watchastheempirefalls — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:21:19 +0000

In Christmas 2010, I took my three daughters — Cara, Mariah and Michaela — to Ecuador’s Amazon to take part in a “Toxi-tour” and stand witness to what could be the worst environmental disaster on the planet. This is the awful mess that Chevron left behind at the headwaters of the Amazon after drilling for oil for almost three decades on the ancestral lands of five indigenous groups. Chevron, via the Texaco brand, dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste into the Amazon waterways that local inhabitants used for drinking water. Several independent health evaluations show that cancer rates in the area have skyrocketed. The magnitude of the damage — recently confirmed by a three-judge appellate panel in Ecuador that relied on extensive scientific evidence — makes the impact of BP’s recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico seem small by comparison….

and this is why white liberals are kind of terrible… if only because she took her daughters on a tour of a man made disaster that was a direct result of colonization and capitalism. thats right. i busted out the C words.

fuck chevron.

welp… i made it

watchastheempirefalls — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:38:24 +0000

i survived last week. thats a victory.