a publication of the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

June 2013 | Vol. 26 Issue 5 San Antonio, Tejas

2

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

5•

ATTENTION VOZ READERS: If you have a mailing address correction please send it in to lavoz@esperan-zacenter.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 sub-stantially 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.

La Voz deEsperanza

June 2013vol. 26 issue 5

Editor Gloria A. Ramírez

Design Monica V. Velásquez

Editorial AssistanceAlice Canestaro García

ContributorsMarisol Cortez, Anel Flores,

Roberto (Dr. Cintli) Rodríguez, andBill Stichnot

La Voz Mail CollectiveDiana 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-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 1.877.327.5902www.esperanzacenter.org

Inquiries/Articles can be sent to:lavoz@esperanzacenter.orgArticles 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.

La 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 wait-ing for the return of a son, daughter or grand-child who has crossed over to the land of the American dream. She does not know wheth-er 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 them-selves 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 what-ever 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 exam-ples of animals of every kind being poached and killed due to greed. Plants are another genre that are being threatened as seeds be-come copyrighted and manipulated by corpo-

rations. Farmers and whole communities of indigenous people no longer have the free-dom to grow crops at will. Indigenous com-munities that have relied on traditional farm-ing 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 abil-ity of corporate giants to reach over borders to extract riches from bodies of people became crystal clear

when a Bangladesh garment-factory build-ing collapsed, killing over 1,000 people. This happened even after the owner had been no-tified by workers that they had heard crack-ing noises in the building. It happened even after the building was ordered closed the day before.

We have written often about the extrac-tion 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

Pathway to Apartheid & the Codification of Indian Removal II by Roberto RodriguezMental Health Care in America, part 2 by Bill StichnotRight to the City, Rights of Nature by Marisol CortezUniversal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother EarthRemembering Erica Andrews by Anel Flores

AP Photo

InsIde thIs Issue:

p. 3 p. 5 p. 7

p. 11

p. 13

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

3

It is a border enforcement and nation-al security piece of legislation – which continues to rely heavily on racial profil-ing – and is anything but “comprehensive immigration reform.” It will be a slow process and, in regards to legalization, nothing will commence prior to a five-year project of building more walls and fences and a certification that the border is secure.

In the barrio that I grew up in Los An-geles, we have an expression in Spanish for such things as this proposed legisla-tion: PPP. Rough translation: Pure BS.

Under the guise of reform and le-galization, the final bill will codify the creation of a permanent, stateless class of peoples, without full human rights (in-cluding being ineligible for Obamacare) and without citizenship: the classic defi-nition of dehumanization, this while continuing the further militarization of the border. At best, those who do not get incarcerated or deported will receive the status of “registered provisional im-migrant.” After ten years of that status, they become eligible for the status of “Lawful Permanent Resi-dent.” In total, these applicants would have to wait at least 13 years to become eligible for a “pathway to citizenship” (just in time for the 2028 elections!).

The only relatively humane portion of the legislation is the one that permits Dream students to become eligible (after many penalties and financial hurdles) for citizenship after 5 years. Not unexpectedly, the new bracero program – tailored for the corpo-rate sector, would also kick in sooner.

The full bill can be read at www.schumer.senate.gov/forms/immigration.pdf. A two-page outline from Sen. Rubio, no friend to migrants, can be read at www.rubio.senate.gov.

What the president will eventually sign into law – after hear-ings and amendments and after conferencing between Senate and House versions – will codify an immigration policy that enforces

not simply a border, but a nationwide hunter battalion mentality through its enforcement apparatuses. It will in-clude systematic searches (E-Verify) and a national ID system whose objec-tive will be mass deportations and for-profit mass incarceration schemes. The proposal contains $5.5 billion more for the militarization of the border – which includes increasing reliance on drone technology and the use of the National Guard, with a goal of 100% surveil-lance – and of course, more agents. Its emphasis will continue to be exclusion of as many migrants (already here) as possible, relying on bureaucratic tech-nicalities and exorbitant fines for such exclusions.

The codification of a new Indian Removal policy simply means that red-brown Indigenous peoples will continue to be the primary targets of the migra. These are the same peoples that have been displaced, often vio-lently, by U.S. policies throughout the Americas. And this targeting is not by

default. It is the result of extreme racial animus that can be read on a daily basis, anywhere in the country, any time the topic of immigration is raised.

The proposal amounts to false advertising and is based on a false premise. As Tucson’s Derechos Humanos human rights or-ganization notes, it should be called the: walls, drones, surveil-lance, national ID, criminalization, mass firing, mass deporta-tion… and the new bracero program act.

At best, the immigration proposal amounts to an enhanced draconian-based regime (a police state) with the attempt at crimi-nalizing, incarcerating and deporting as many millions of red-brown peoples as possible… which is President Obama’s olive branch to right wing conservatives. While he has deported more people than any president before him – destroying untold fami-lies in the process – that is supposed to give him street cred with

Pathway to aPartheid & the Codification of Indian Removal II

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.”

by Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, SpeakOut | Op-Ed

Santiago Armengod | www.culturestrike.net

4

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

5•

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.

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!

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. Opera-tion Streamline – which benefits the Correctional Corporation of America (and other for-profit companies) is a nationwide crimi-nalization 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 “de-

bate” 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 real-ity, 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 conser-vatives 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 peo-ple want something done, but the NRA and the weapons industry wins every time. Same with the “debate” over torture, drone war-fare 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 legisla-tive process, so be it. But another legitimate response is to com-pletely reject these sleight-of-hand efforts – which is beginning to take place.

Unless the final immigration bill is a human rights docu-ment, 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

Melanie Cervantes | www.notonemoredeportation.com

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

5

I 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 envi-ronment. As it turned out he was diagnosed as Schizo-phrenic. 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 de-finitive 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 Statis-tical Manual of Mental Disorders), “the bible” which Psycholo-gists 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 interven-tion 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 (psy-chopath) 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 charg-es 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 demand-ing 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, ignor-ing 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 psycholo-gist, 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

mental health needs, you and your therapist will have to fight to get more than the minimum treatment from a therapist or psy-chologist. Because a psychologist costs more money than a Mas-ters level practitioner, the HMOs will likely go with them. As Dr. Ablow suggested, “you get the lowest possible cost care. Some-one 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 dis-ease, it may take many sessions for the client to get insight into the disease and affect a remission. If that same person should experi-ence another depressive episode, the studies suggest it will mean a lifetime of monitoring if not more sessions, perhaps hospitaliza-tions. 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 con-fidentially issue. Indeed, all the clients expect confidentiality so they can speak freely. With few exceptions (threat to self or oth-ers) they have it. Now there are times when a therapist technically breaks confidentiality. For example, when talking to their supervi-sor, or being part of the client’s medical team. But these people, too, are covered by the ethical rules of confidentiality. A breach

Mental Health Carein America, part 2 by Bill Stichnot

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.

6

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

5•

. . . cont’d on pg 12

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 prob-ably 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 infor-mation 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 im-provements. Liz Szabo of USA Today wrote the headline to her article as “Affordable Care Act Addresses Mental Health Is-sues.” 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 un-insured Americans.”

Garth Graham, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, says that new health exchanges will be required to cover men-tal health and substance abuse treatment. Most people will be eligible for Medicaid, such as low income adults without chil-dren, or will be able to buy coverage through new health exchang-es. 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 cov-erage.

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 Califor-nia 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 prob-lems. 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 appropri-ate a dollar-for-dollar match for states’ mental health programs, the cost would be about $20 bil-lion. He also maintained that ev-ery dollar spent on Prop. 63 pro-grams has saved 88 cents on the criminal justice system and other health and housing costs.

Matsui’s Excellence in Men-tal Health Bill predates Stein-berg’s idea but is similar. Her bill, introduced last June, would allow community clinics to re-ceive Medicaid reimbursements when providing mental health or addiction treatment of low-income patients. Another fund-ing proposal would come from Napolitano’s office. The Santa Fe Springs lawmaker has an-nounced 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 Ameri-cans 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 Execu-tive Orders that he wants implemented. He devoted an entire sec-tion 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

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

7

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 se-ries): 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, emerg-ing as movement moniker with the formation of the RTTC Al-liance 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 ap-propriation.”

The right to participation is straightforward and familiar: it in-volves 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 ap-propriation, 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 ex-panding 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 com-mons, as resource that meets needs basic to hu-man 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 librar-ies 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, home-less 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 argu-ably 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 can-not 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 eco-nomic redistribution, though of course it is also about that. It is

PART FOURCities 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”

Right to the City, Rights of Nature

If 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”

by Marisol Cortez

8

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

5•also about reinhabitation as a strategy of decolonization: remem-bering 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 remember-ing that la madre tierra herself has an inherent right simply to exist and endure—self-organizing, intact, healthy.

WPO Will Never RetreatIt was in Kansas, far from home, where I had moved to take a

teaching position at the state university, that I first became famil-iar 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 Co-penhagen accord, this conference produced a draft of the Univer-sal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, a paradigm-shifting statement defining earth as “a self-regulating community of inter-related 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 ver-sion was adopted in 2008 by Ecuador), the statement was submit-ted to the UN for consideration of adoption, and has since become the basis for a global movement to pass rights of nature ordinanc-es 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 hap-pened 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” con-cept 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 partici-pants questioned whether the concept of the rights of nature could be an effective tool in preserving treaty rights and ensuring envi-ronmental 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 be-cause I was hurting. I had arrived in Kansas amidst crisis, following a traumatic move out of state that fol-lowed fast on the heels of a split with my daughter’s fa-ther. After a time spent orga-nizing around environmental justice issues in San Antonio near family and friends, I re-turned to academia in shock--now a single parent, now with a deeper commitment to social movement goals, now no lon-ger sure whether it made sense for me to continue as an aca-demic. Everything was sudden-ly 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 sig-naling 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 intellectu-al 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, lov-ers, 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 meta-narrative [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 to the city”

... is 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.

of their previ-ous meanings and histories.

This elevation of abstracted, Western ways of knowing over place-based, indigenous knowledge was given physical expres-sion in the geographical placement of the two universities that shaped my time in Lawrence, Kansas. A large land grant univer-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. A university on a hill that froze hard and cold the first winter--although the second winter it hardly snowed at all, alarmingly--while down below was the town. And below that in the river bot-toms of the Wakarusa lay the remnants of wetlands surrounding another school, this one wrested from the bloody history of the federal Indian boarding schools. Haskell Indian Nations Univer-sity was built in the swamps in the late 1800s –next to the waste-water lift station, next to the hazardous materials drop-off site for the small Midwestern town in which I found myself.

I found my way to the wetlands during that first, strange se-mester in Kansas, searching for some place or community that could hold the pain of what felt like the death of a previous self. At a dinner where the new postdocs were introduced to the donors who had made our positions possible, a woman from Haskell ap-proached, introducing herself and giving me her card. She was the librarian there. You said you do environmental justice work. You should come visit us, she said.

That’s how I found my way to the Wetlands Preservation Or-

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 biodiver-sity not only endangered; they also had deep historic and sacred meaning for the students who attended Haskell from 150 differ-ent indigenous nations. The wetlands were where Indian chil-dren, 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 chil-

dren ran away to escape the militaristic en-vironment of a school whose Americanizing mission cut off hair, prohibited native languag-es, and forced children to learn Western agricul-tural methods, so as to “kill the Indian and save the man,” in the infamous words of Captain Rich-ard Pratt. The wetlands pro-

vided the cover for forbidden ceremonial practices to continue. They were where children sought refuge, and where they were buried when they died from cold or malnutrition or disease. In the years after Haskell transferred to tribal administration and be-came a center of indigenous cultural survival rather than its ex-termination, the wetlands served as the living lab where students recovered traditional medicine and native languages.

This history remained embedded within the landscape, even as the local, state, and federal governments of the U.S. encroached upon Haskell’s campus little by little, parceling off pieces of the wetlands to the fish and wildlife bureau; the university on the hill; the university down the road; and eventually to the highway ex-pansion project aiming to ease commuter traffic by connecting the bedroom community of Lawrence to the wealthy suburbs of Kan-sas City. There in the fragments of wetlands that remained, I felt the presence of the children who had died so far from home. That space of atrocity and survival was the only space that reached within me the grief of exile and metamorphosis both, that under-stood my terrible longing to return home. There were almost no Chican@s in Kansas, almost no one who looked like--well, not necessarily like me, given my mixed blood. But almost no one who looked like familia, like gente I grew up with, like home. I had to stop myself from waving to the rooferos I saw on my trudge up the hill, knowing they would not see me as kin. Almost no Chican@s...but there were Indians. And for the first time in my life, in my non-indigenous alliance with indigenous communities, I was struck by what it really means to have mestiza conscious-

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

9

‘right to the city”

... is 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.

Wetlands Preservation Organization at the University of Kansas

10

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

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 stu-dents and professors to defend the wetlands, that I came to under-stand 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.

From Occupation to Reinhabitation: Back to the Bridge

As Mexican- and African-origin peoples, we once were con-nected to land--this land or land elsewhere. Environmental histo-rian Carolyn Merchant makes the point that there is an indigeneity for European-descended peoples as well; part of what the expan-sion 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 coloniz-ing other lands. Wherever our ancestors come from on the planet, then, most of us once lived in intimate relation to specific home-places—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 lo-cal, place-based ties, languages, histories, and identities. The land grab has always been, and continues to be, central to the displace-ments 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 postco-lonial 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 Ama-zon. 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 sur-render. I think of Haskell professor Daniel Wildcat’s argument that what the crisis of climate change requires is the “cultural cli-mate 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 bio-regionalism,” 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 ver-nacular[.] ... Our effort to reorient Chicano Studies through an epistemology of place intends to open new avenues for the ex-pression of the social and cultural practices of local, or situated knowledge. … Lacking an epistemology of local knowledge, stu-dents of Chicano Studies will be left with few options for criti-cally 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 con-nections 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 expand-ing 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 environ-mentalisms of city initiatives, inattentive to deep considerations of power and justice. This is the survival of working class en-gagements with place via the sharing of memorias, fotos, dichos, comida, stories: Westside stories, Eastside stories, Southside sto-ries. 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 physi-cally, 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 be-tween academic and activist worlds. She works primarily on issues of environmental justice as a creative writer, community organizer and lib-eration sociologist. Email her at cortez.marisol@gmail.com

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

11

Rights of

Mother earthProposal Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earthfrom 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, nour-ishment 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 (1) Mother Earth is a living being.(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating com-munity of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and repro-duces 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 be-ings, 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.

article 2. Inherent rights of Mother earth(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

its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions;(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a dis-tinct, 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.

article 3. obligations of human beings to Mother earth(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth.(2) Human beings, all States, and all public and private institu-tions must:

(a) act in accordance with the rights and obligations recog-nized in this Declaration;(b) recognize and promote the full implementation and en-

12

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

5•

...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 learn-ing, analysis, interpretation and com-munication about how to live in har-mony 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, pro-tection and conservation of the rights of Mother Earth;(f) respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, process-es 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 insti-tutions to defend the rights of Mother Earth and of all beings;

(i) establish precautionary and restric-tive measures to prevent human activi-ties from causing species extinction, the destruction of ecosystems or the disruption of ecological cycles;(j) guarantee peace and eliminate nu-clear, chemical and biological weap-ons;(k) promote and support practices of respect for Mother Earth and all be-ings, in accordance with their own cul-tures, traditions and customs;(l) promote economic systems that are in harmony with Mother Earth and in accordance with the rights recog-nized in this Declaration.

article 4. Definitions

(1) The term “being” includes ecosys-tems, 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

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 ill-ness. (H): Train more than 5,000 additional mental health profession-als 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.

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

Edward Vela(210) 735-0669

922 W. HildebrandSan Antonio, T X 78201

Thank you to these

businesses for their continued

support of Esperanza. . .

Mental Health Care in America - continued from pg 6

Evergreen Garden

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

13

My 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 be-

cause 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).

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.

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

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

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

Remembering Erica Andrews

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

Evangelina Villarreal Rosales

Amnesty International #127 info. Call Arthur Dawes, 210.213.5919.

Anti-War Peace Vigil 4th Thurs-day (since 9/11/2001) from 4-5pm @ Flores & Commerce Contact Tim 210.822.4525 | timduda@aol.com

Bexar Co. Green Party info@bex-argreens.org or call 210.471.1791.

Celebration Circle meets on Sun-days, 11am @ JumpStart @ Blue Star Arts Complex. Meditation, Weds @ 7:30 pm @ Quaker Meeting House, 7052 Vandiver. 210.533-6767

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

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.

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

Fuerza Unida, 710 New Laredo, Hwy. 210.927.2294 www.lafuerza-unida.org

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

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

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

PFLAG, meets 1st Thursdays @

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

PFLAG Español meets 1st Tues-days (Primer martes) @ 2802 W. Sa-linas, 7pm. 210.849.6315

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Shambhala Buddhist Medita-tion Center classes are on Tuesdays 7-8pm, & Sundays from 9:30am-12:30pm at 1114 So. St. Mary’s. Call 210.222.9303.

S.N.A.P. (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). Con-tact Barbara at 210.725.8329.

Voice for Animals: 210.737.3138 or www.voiceforanimals.org for info

* co

mm

unity

mee

tings

*

Make a tax-deductible donation.

for more info call 210.228.0201

Please use my donation for the Rinconcito de Esperanza

$35 La Voz subscription

¡Todos Somos Esperanza!Start your 2013

monthly donations now!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

Be Part of a

Progressive Movementin San Antonio

14

LA V

OZ

de

ESP

ERA

NZ

A •

Ju

ne

2013

Vo

l. 2

6 Is

sue

5•

Notas Y MásBrief 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.June 2013

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.). Tick-ets are $7 and include BBQ chicken, sau-sage, and sides. Proceeds go towards new uniforms for the 2014 year. | Email band.info@accmb.org or call 210.787.0526.

The People’s Power Coalition commu-nity meeting is Wednesday, June 5th at 6:30 pm at Southwest Workers Union (1416 E Commerce) in the Roots of Change Com-munity Garden.

People’s Power Coalition also hosts study-ins at the Bazan Library (2200 W. Commerce) on energy & environmental justice every other Saturday 11am–1pm (June 1st, 15th, & 29th!). | www.facebook.com/ThePeoplesPowerCoalition

Urban 15’s 2013 Josiah Media Festival’s

call for entries deadline is Sat, June 1. Fes-tival takes place July 11-13. | Contact: 210-736-1500 or josiahfestival@urban15.org.

San Antonio Communist Party USA Club meeting Sunday, June 9 @ Bazan Branch Library, 2200 W. Commerce St. (at Nueces) to discuss building a move-ment in S.A. to free the Cuban 5 and orga-nize around other issues related to Cuba | Contact juanchostanford@yahoo.com.

The 9th Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival is scheduled on June 14-16 in San Francisco. | www.qwocmap.org

CantoMundo for Latina/o poets convenes June 27-30 at UT–Austin. Apply at: www.cantomundo.org/guidelinesapplication

Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio So-cial (MALCS) invites submissions for its annual Summer Institute: ¡Aquí Estamos! / We Are Here!: Movements, Migrations,

Pilgrimage and Belonging to be held July 17-20 at Ohio State University. In addition, the Academic Article Writing Workshop will be held July 17 & 19. Submission are due June 15, 2013. | www.malcs.org

38th National Conference on Men & Masculinities ~ Forging Justice: Creat-ing Safe, Equal & Accountable Com-munities meets August 8-10 in Detroit. | www.nomas.org.

Aztlán Libre Press, an independent Xi-can@ press based out of San Antonio, Tex-as, announces the publication of its sixth book: Reyes Cárdenas: Chicano Poet 1970-2010. Visit www.aztlanlibrepress.com to purchase and review books.

The 2013 American Grants & Loans Catalog contains more than 2800 financial programs, subsidies, scholarships, grants & loans offered by the federal government. To order call: 1 (800) 610-4543.

LA V

OZ

de ESP

ERA

NZ

A • Ju

ne 2013 V

ol. 26 Issu

e 5•

15

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/

CALL TO ACTIONfor a City-Wide, Fully Inclusive

HumAN RIgHTs ORdINANCe

Call Daniel Graney 210.334-7850/210.863-6086or Dee Villarrubia MSW 210.860.7562 for more on

CAUSA and how to get involved!

Father’s Day Caravan to

Close the Polk County

Detention Center

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.

Non-Profit Org.US Postage

PAIDSan Antonio, TX

Permit #332

Prefer to read it online?

LET US KNOW!TO CANCEL A SUBSCRIPTION

EMAIL: lavoz@esperanzacenter.org or CALL: 210.228.0201

Wrong address?

La Voz de Esperanza922 San Pedro San Antonio TX 78212210.228.0201 • www.esperanzacenter.org

Puentes de PoderSummer 2013: Cities of HopeJoin us for Puentes de Poder, an ongoing public education

program presented by the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

Call Marisol at 210.878.6751 for more info!

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

Saturday, July 2711am - Location TBD Topic: Eastside Stories: Community Histories of the Hays St Bridge

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

Fillm Screening & Platica

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

Share your fotos & memories of San Anto’s Westside and join us for cafecito, snacks, y

convivio @ the Casa de Cuentos!

En Aquellos Tiempos2nd Saturday Gathering

Saturday, June 8th 10am @ 816 S. Colorado (at Guadalupe St)

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

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