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.We start talking about who you are supporting, and who I am supporting, and we are going to get into a fight, an argument, a shouting match, and that is the mood of the country because someone said, “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.” Well, I’m not with the terrorists, nor am I with whoever said it.I’m sorry.Those things need to be said, and they are being said by white folks, they are being said on comedy shows, why can’t we say them?AG: Because we have Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzalez, and, previously, Colin Powell, perhaps the most multicultural imperial formation yet.What haveveConnect - 2011-05-06been the effects of this professionalization, or the way that struggles in the 1980salgraparticularly—the decade of the Hispanic—became commodified and emptied ofthe systemic critique?tium - PRS: We have found now, through history, that that was very calculated.It was a calculated move through the Heritage Foundation at the time of the census.And here is this hype to clean up those rowdy renegades, once again to round up the renegades.Let’s bring some of them to the house, into the “second story”[laughter], and we’ve got it made.So that one is hard to deal with: we’ve got toaiwan eBook ConsorTconvey to our gente that we are pawns, we are suckers.One of the most embarrassing moments to me is to see all those beautiful Latina and Latino entertainers who wanted to just be such nice Americans and show their patriotism by singing the national anthem in Spanish, and I was so embarrassed that they were rejected by the power structure of this country.They were vilified for daring to sing the national anthem in Spanish.Two weeks later, I think, Bush was singing “La Cucar-acha,” or something on Cinco de Mayo, or for the National Council de La Raza.veconnect.com - licensed toAG: So you come back to Austin in the early ‘80s and we are now in 2006.What.palgrahas changed; what hasn’t?RS: What stayed the same is that people are still going to jail from the eastom wwwside.In Austin, very few Chicanos are recruited to the University of Texas—it’s a building we look at from across the great divide.So, that hasn’t changed.The homeland has been bombarded, but there are still pockets of resistance: new languages, new issues, related still to land; more environmental issues beingyright material frarticulated by the Latino community.What has changed is the onslaught of gen-Coptrification invading the West Bank—our West Bank; condos galore; affordable housing for anybody, except for the natives that lived there for over sixty years.So those are some of the changes.AG: Some people would say that’s progress.That’s what development is supposed to bring.RS: Well, yeah, of course—those clean Hispanics that probably got a cut out of that land deal.Of course it’s good for them.Have them talk to Señora Cásares on 5th Street about the railroad tracks where the villas are at now.Have them talk to the Limón clan about what happened to 5th Street.Yeah, they moved away, yeah, 10.1057/9780230101470 - Behind Bars, Edited by Suzanne Obolerpal-oboler-13.indd 219pal-oboler-13.indd 2199/9/09 10:26 AM9/9/09 10:26 AM220 ALAN ELADIO GÓMEZthere was upward mobility, yeah, they were hard workers, but a lot of it had to do with not being able to keep the compound where grandma and grandpa, andmom and dad, and all the kids were born.That’s very important.So, a lot of those things were gone, but as always, there was struggle.New issues: immigration, the war in Mexico—the new war in Mexico—andthe need to respond to it.Why? Because they are our people.Why? Because they are humans caught in the trap.Why? Because we understood the forces behind all of that, which was empire junior, son of empire—or son of vampire, more like it.Don’t print that.No, print what ever.There was a new movement, so to speak.New faces, new language, new concepts to learn.And so I wanted to learn, and so I aligned myself with people who knew—young people, and that being a struggle in and of itself, because I wanted to work with young people, young people wanted to work with me.But we have that big generational divide that both sides perpetuate.A lot of old fogies think youngsters have nothing to contribute, and a lot of theveConnect - 2011-05-06youngsters think they were immaculately conceived and nothing was here beforealgrathem and everything started with them—kind of like The Chronicle [laughter].4These new struggles brought us in contact with new people and a chance to visittium - Pthose lands where those struggles were being waged; to learn more about why we were supporting, concretely, rather than in a vacuum, as so many people have done before, and as we have done before—without much analysis, just sheer for the hell of revolution, for the hell of it.We knew intuitively, we knew intellectually, we certainly knew as fellow strugglers, what it was about.And then, these new conceptsaiwan eBook ConsorTthat I am still learning, that young people start bringing, and the discussions and debates, and the ideological struggles that were reminiscent of the 1960s—I didn’t have that language.And so, I went out to get it and try to learn it.I am still trying to learn it, because its important that I learn the language that the young people are speaking, that the social movements are addressing their issues in, so that I can be a good communicator amongst them, because that is what I want to do.You mentioned something about my final words in my book.Again, that is notveconnect.com - licensed torhetoric.Some people might read it as rhetoric—who do don’t know me.Some.palgrapeople might read it as rhetoric because every youngster on the block who grabs a microphone is into revolution, and I respect that, because it has got to start some-om wwwwhere.But I’m seventy-two years old, I have not been broken by any system, and I reiterate: I commit the remainder of my days to helping expose that machine that almost ground me up, that tried to grind me up, and that has ground so many of our people up, and that continues to grind them in larger numbers each year.yright material frAG: The recent count is more than 2.5 million people incarcerated; and theCopnumber of people in the criminal justice system—either on parole, probation, or other arrangements—is steadily reaching 7 million.Thirty-four years after your release from Marion and fighting against the control unit, behavior modification programs, and torture techniques are now a centerpiece for a sadistic foreign policy, making prisons and torture and war the most profitable exports of the U.S.How do you see the current crisis of incarceration for people of color and, most recently, with immigrants?10.1057/9780230101470 - Behind Bars, Edited by Suzanne Obolerpal-oboler-13.indd 220pal-oboler-13.indd 2209/9/09 10:26 AM9/9/09 10:26 AM“TROUBADOUR OF JUSTICE” 221RS: A whole new set of prisoners: that is the end result [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]