La Prensa del oeste de Massachusetts

foto: CAROL LOLLIS
Back row from left, Gustavo Acosta of Holyoke, Arlene Rodriguez of Holyoke, Nancy Garcia of Springfield and Orlando Santiago of Springfield; middle from left, Ruth Trujillo-Acosta of Holyoke and Noemi E. Valentin of Northampton; all stand with the editor of La Prensa of Western Mass., Natalia Muñoz. The others are contributors to the paper.

This photo and caption are from the article that ran July 21 in The Daily Hamsphire Gazette, "La journalista: New monthly La Prensa goes after Hispanic stories, market," written by CHAD CAIN, STAFF WRITER.

Boricua En La Luna-Live-Acustico

These two videos are background for the polls to the right. Enjoy.

Out Of The Shadows - Transgender Children

Yep, Even the Rat Was White

A group of us went to see Michael Moore's new film, SiCKO. [btw: you really need to see this film, mi gente.]

While we were waiting for the film to start, my friend asked me,

"Why do you think he did that?"

I said, "I don't know. I'm a psychologist. Everything I know about humans I learned from..."

She finished my sentence with, "Rats!"

We both laughed. Yeah, and even the rat was white.

Dr. Oliva Espin

from The Monitor on Psychology, February, 2007

American Psychological Foundation Legacy Club Spotlight: Dr. Oliva Espín

Oliva Espín, PhD, emerita professor of women's studies at San Diego State University and at the California School of Professional Psychology of Alliant International University, is making a substantial bequest to the American Psychological Foundation (APF). A psychotherapist, teacher, consultant and researcher, Espín is considered a pioneer in the practice and theory of feminist therapy with women from different cultural backgrounds, particularly United States-born Latinas and immigrant/refugee women.

She discusses the importance of giving back to the profession that has had such a significant impact on her life.

For the complete article click on post title, "Dr. Oliva Espín" above. It's short, but good.

To go to Dr. Espín's webpage, copy and paste this into your browser:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~oespin/

Ask The White Guy

"Ask the White Guy" is a column by Luke Visconti published in the online magazine, DiversityInc. Click on the post title above to read his latest, Why Whites Don't Understand the 'Struggle.'

You can read Visconti's column for free, but DiversityInc will ask for your email before you're cleared to read this and other free columns. Then they'll send you updates via email. It's pretty interesting, too.

Alexis Giraldo, Transgender Inmate Sues Over Prison Rape

By LISA LEFF
The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

Alexis Giraldo was born as a man but lives life as a woman. She takes hormones to feminize her appearance, a fact she says prison officials didn't care about even as her male cellmate repeatedly raped and beat her.

Now free on parole, Giraldo is suing the state prison system and several guards over the state's policy of assigning transgender inmates to men's or women's prisons depending on whether they have had a sex change."Prisons are violent places, and male prisons are especially violent places," said Greg Walston, a lawyer who took Giraldo's case for free and asked a jury this week for unspecified damages. "You take that boiling cauldron and you put one woman in there which is exactly what happened here and it's like throwing a fresh piece of meat into a lion's cage."

Giraldo, 30, claims Folsom State Prison guards ignored her complaints and returned her to the same cell until she was assaulted again, then placed in protective custody and moved to another facility.

Giraldo is suing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for emotional distress and violating her constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. She has asked Superior Court Judge Ellen Chaitin to order prison officials to come up with a new system for housing transgender inmates.

The Associated Press has a policy of not naming people alleging sexual assault. However, Giraldo has spoken out publicly and has been identified by a transgender rights organization that is advocating for her.

Several counties in California, including San Francisco, have created separate units specifically for transgender prisoners. But like other states and the federal Bureau of Prisons, California assigns inmates to prisons based on their genitalia rather than physical appearance.

Biological men who dress and act like women but have not had sex reassignment surgery can be assigned to a psychiatric prison like the one to which Giraldo eventually transferred or the general population of a regular men's prison, according to Walston.

The California attorney general's office, which is representing the corrections department and Folsom staff members also named as defendants in the lawsuit, said Friday it would not comment on the case.

Briefs filed by the state argue that Giraldo initially was in a consensual sexual relationship with her cellmate in violation of prison policy, did not report specific rape claims and refused offers to be moved to a different cell. Once she made it clear her cellmate was sexually assaulting her and prison staff found strangulation marks on her neck, she was removed to protective custody, the state maintains.

"Plaintiff alleges that he informed prison staff on a number of occasions about these events. However, the documentation maintained by prison personnel including some of the defendants in this case does not bear out these assertions," the state's brief states.

Teda Boyll, a retired guard and supervisor in California, testified for Giraldo as an expert witness Friday, saying that in her opinion Folsom officials failed to adequately investigate Giraldo's concerns and assure her safety.

"There are some warning signs," Boyll said. "When an inmate says, 'I am getting pressured for sex,' it means it is already happened or it is imminent he will have to provide nonconsensual sex to another inmate."

Giraldo was sent to Folsom for shoplifting and a parole violation in January 2006. She spent three months in the general prison population and another four in a single cell away from other inmates. She remained in the medical prison until she was paroled this month.

She testified Friday that she voluntarily had sex with her former cellmate, Jorge Villavacencio, for a couple of weeks but that she changed her mind after he became violent and possessive. She said that she informed a psychologist and at least three guards about her circumstances, but that they did not take them seriously.

"I'm like scared and frustrated that this happened to me," Giraldo said from the witness stand. "I'm a woman who got raped. ... I feel like people know and think of me as dirty. I feel dirty."

Villavacencio has denied raping Giraldo and is scheduled to testify for the state.

Valerie Jenness, a University of California, Irvine, criminologist who recently studied sexual assaults in California prisons, testified that 59 percent of the state's transgender inmates have reported being sexually assaulted, compared with 4 percent of the general prison population.

Barriers to Fair Play

Click on the title of this post, "Barriers to Fair Play" to read what the National Women's Law Center has to say about girls and women and athletics. Yep, unfair treatment is still the name of the game.

Here's a sampling:

Softball was the source of the greatest number of complaints.

Ninety-five allegations of participation and treatment violations targeted a school’s overall athletic program.

Where specific sports were named in a complaint, softball was the source of 79 claims at the K-12 level and 13 claims at the college level.

After softball, basketball was the sport specified most often—60 times—at the K-12 level. At the college level, soccer was the second most cited source of complaints, accounting for 7 claims.

Feliz Feliz

Hoy es el cumpleaños de Natalia a.k.a. Nate. Here we are in the days when a bike ride was all it took to make a day just fine or, if the bike broke down, a day of heartbreak.


Here is our mother, Viviana a.k.a Mamá. She had me when she just turned 19 and then Natalia at 22. Inbetween, Teresa was born. Teresa preferred being a jock to being a biker though. Um, Mamá didn't tend to smile like this when we told her we got bikes. But she always sang to us on our birthdays, in person or over the phone, the birthday song:

Feliz feliz en tú día
Natalia que Dios te bendiga
Que reine la paz en tú vida
¡Y que cumplas muchos mas!

Then she would sing the "Mañanitas que cantaba el Rey David." And then we would all cheer. Now, we call each other and still sing the birthday song over the phone and cheer. ¡Otro año mas! Pa'lante es pa' ya. ¡Chijí, chijá!

What's in that Children's Book? Part 2007

Borders stores in UK shelve Tintin book

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jul 12, 9:16 PM ET

LONDON - Borders is removing "Tintin in the Congo" from the children's section of its British stores, after a customer complained the comic work was racist, the company said Thursday.

David Enright, a London-based human-rights lawyer, was shopping at Borders with his family when he came upon the book, first published in 1931, and opened it to find what he characterized as racist abuse.

"The material suggests to (children) that Africans are subhuman, that they are imbeciles, that they're half savage," Enright said in a telephone interview.

"My black wife, who actually comes from Africa originally, is sitting there with my boys and I'm about to hand this book to them.... What message am I sending to them? That my wife is a monkey, that they are monkeys?"

The book is the second in a series of 23 tracing the adventures of Tintin, an intrepid reporter, and his dog, Snowy. The series has sold 220 million copies worldwide and been translated in 77 languages.

But "Tintin in the Congo" has been widely criticized as racist by fans and critics alike.

In it, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi depicts the white hero's adventures in the Congo against the backdrop of an idiotic, chimpanzee-like native population that eventually comes to worship Tintin — and his dog — as gods.

Remi later said he was embarrassed by the book, and some editions have had the more objectionable content removed. When an unexpurgated edition was brought out in Britain in 2005, it came wrapped with a warning and was written with a forward explaining the work's colonial context.

Enright, who said he first complained to Borders and Britain's Commission for Racial Equality about a month ago, argued such a warning was not enough.

"Whether it's got a piece of flimsy paper around it or not, it's irrelevant, it's in the children's section," he said, adding that he felt the book should be treated like pornography or anti-Semitic literature and not displayed in mainstream bookstores at all.

Borders agreed to move the book to its adult graphic novels section, but said in a statement it would continue to sell it.

The Commission for Racial Equality backed Enright, saying in a statement Thursday that the book was full of "hideous racial prejudice."

"The only place that it might be acceptable for this to be displayed would be in a museum, with a big sign saying `old fashioned, racist claptrap.'"

Somos Herman@s

Mexicans walk across the desert near the town of Sasabe heading towards the U.S. border at Arizona in this May 24, 2006 file photo. Tougher security along the U.S.-Mexico border is forcing migrants to take more dangerous, remote routes to cross into the United States and pushing up the number of deaths in the desert.

More Migrants Die As U.S. Tightens Border Security

By Robin Emmott
July 12, 2007

REYNOSA, Mexico (Reuters) - Tougher security along the U.S.-Mexico border is forcing migrants to take more dangerous, remote routes to cross into the United States and pushing up the number of deaths in the desert.

This year could see a record of well over 500 such deaths. At least 275 Mexican bodies have been found in the first six months, according to a Mexican Congressional report backed by U.S. and Mexican border groups and academics.

They say at least 4,500 Mexicans have died trying to cross since the United States drastically increased border controls in late 1994 to stem illegal immigration.

Following the failure of President George W. Bush's immigration reform proposals in Congress last month, U.S. policy is centered on tighter border security rather than giving immigrants more options to find jobs legally.

But some border experts say enforcement does not stop those trying to get into the United States and only makes it more dangerous, greatly raising the fees charged by people smugglers. As security increases, so will the number of deaths, they say.

"Has enhanced border security increased the number of migrant deaths? Unquestionably," said Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at the University of California San Diego. "There is no other way to explain the sharp increase in fatalities."

The Border Patrol recovered some 116 bodies in the Arizona desert between last October 1 and the end of June, and it only records deaths on the U.S. side of the frontier. It blames ruthless smugglers for taking migrants through dangerous terrain and sometimes abandoning them there.

"The number of migrant deaths is increasing because smugglers are taking them to less-patrolled, more dangerous areas," Border Patrol spokesman Ramon Rivera said. He said agents rescued 1,450 people in the desert in the same period.

Unknown numbers of migrants from Central America and other countries also die each year.

The U.S. government has raised its Border Patrol deployment to around 13,500 agents today from fewer than 4,000 in 1993 and plans to add a further 9,600 agents by 2012. It deployed 6,000 National Guard troops to the border last year for a two-year period until more agents are hired.

Washington aims to have "operational control" of the border by 2013 by building a 700-mile (1,120-km) wall along parts of the frontier and creating a "virtual fence" in desert areas with drones, sensors, cameras, satellite technology and vehicle barriers.

DROWNING, HYPOTHERMIA

Before the stepped-up enforcement operations, experts say most deaths were due to traffic accidents as migrants dashed across freeways in border areas. Today, most die from hypothermia in the desert or by drowning in the Rio Grande and irrigation canals.

Many Mexicans seeking work in the United States try the overnight trek through the hostile Arizona desert and away from urban areas such as Tijuana on the California border.

Between 2000 and 2005, 802 bodies were found in the desert, compared to 125 between 1990 and 1999, according to the University of Arizona.

Surveillance is expected to increase in the Arizona desert but some experts say that will simply encourage more people to try to cross remote swamp areas of the Rio Grande in Texas.

"As they increase enforcement in Arizona, we will see a shift toward the eastern and western fringes of the border. In Texas, we are already seeing more drownings," said Claudia Smith of the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, which campaigns for immigrants' rights.

Migrant shelters in Mexican border towns say they see no sign of less illegal immigration despite a fall in Border Patrol arrests. Some shelters, such as in Reynosa in northeastern Mexico, are expanding to offer more beds.

U.S. wage levels that are much higher than in Mexico remains the main incentive for attempting the difficult border crossing.

"I've got an uncle in Florida and the chance of something is so much better than here," said Adan Zendejas, a 24-year-old who cannot swim, as he readied to cross the Rio Grande from Reynosa on a car tire.

Learning To Ride

This is the 1969 Sears Mini-Bike my sisters and I would drive full throttle down Pine Drive in Roosevelt, New Jersey racing the Martins after they also got one to see who could make it to the sewer plant at the end of the road first. We usually did and they said we did something to the engine, but believe me all we did was start that little engine up. Then the neighbors who were home in the day complained that we were illegal on the street and making too much noise so we had to ride around the yard but not full-throttle. That wasn’t as much fun so I would take the bike into the woods and try to follow some paths, but the speed wasn’t there and neither was the race. Some years later I got a Kawasaki 250 and then a 440 and then a Honda 550 which I rode in Western Massachusetts. I rode to UMass-Amherst as a student and to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. The ride to Michigan from Massachusetts will need to be a whole other post.

Recently, I was listening to the song “Turpentine” by Brandi Carlile and she has a line about “wishing I was ten again so I could be your friend again” and it got me thinking about being 10 and what friendship is about and this brought me back to this 1969 Sears Mini-Bike and learning to ride in Roosevelt, NJ. It was a town of people who mi familia had little in common with unless you count diaspora, a word I didn't know then, but which explains so many unexplainable things to children after they have grown. We were the only Puerto Ricans (and Catholic in a Boricua way which is to say we lit a lot of candles in front of homemade altars) in a town of Eastern European Jews. This is why I know a little Yiddish. Through racing our mini bikes we kids found some ground to cover together. Until the grown ups stepped in and that was that. But it did take a few weeks because we would race after school before Mamá got home from work in Hoboken. Mamá would have been fine sitting down, lighting a Viceroy, and watching the race from a lawn chair but there truly is this thing called "peer pressure."

There is a lot more to say about Roosevelt and there is even a book written about this town. It brought together some amazing people and created its own Jewish cultural center, like Ben and Bernarda Shahn, Lettie Cottin Pogrebin, and the Rosskams and in Puerto Rico, Jack and Irene Delano. I’ll just write about the mini-bike for now. I can write more about Roosevelt later and how we got there. We moved to Roosevelt from El Barrio when I was 9.

On a noisy mini-bike I was so happy to be in green again after leaving Puerto Rico at 6 and happy to be friends with the Martins. Playing football with them sprained my fingers and being the pitcher for the girls baseball team hurts my right shoulder today, but we learned to ride together.

Maybe it's time for a Harley.

Click on "Learning To Ride" above for a New York Times article on Roosevelt, NJ.

Cats Among Us

from The New York Times, July 2, 2007, Editorial

Anyone who owns a cat is probably an expert in the ways that cats are — and aren’t — domesticated. In fact, no creature exemplifies the idea that domesticated animals chose domestication better than cats, which demonstrate every day just who in the human-feline relationship is doing the choosing.

Exactly how those first cats found a home among us is still a matter of speculation, though it very likely comes down to the rodents among us. But where and when those cats first turned tame has suddenly become much clearer.

Based on a study of mitochondrial DNA in five Old World feline subspecies, scientists have now concluded that domestic cats are descended from the Near Eastern wildcat, or Felis silvestris lybica, a native of the deserts of the Middle East. Domestication probably took place 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, and the oldest known archeological link between humans and cats comes from Cyprus, some 9,500 years ago.

This new genetic evidence resolves the puzzle of cat remains turning up in Cyprus before the rise of the Egyptian civilizations that were supposed to have domesticated the cat.

The wild subspecies that gave up their DNA for these tests still exist, though barely. That is one of the painful ironies of domestication. Creatures who come in from the wild eventually prosper — domestic cats number, after all, in the hundreds of millions — while those who don’t almost inevitably fall upon hard times.

And that, too, is one of the paradoxes of understanding domestication. We cannot know exactly what we have made our own — whether it is animal or vegetable — unless we know the wild state in which it originated. Which is another way of saying that without wildness, we have no way of knowing who we are either.

Dean Green Will Be In Town

Dean Green and me today at a family gathering to honor the many years of commitment that her parents, Florence and Willy Green and her Aunt Catherine and Uncle Harry Forrest have devoted to each other. Chris Green, Dean Green’s brother, who owns the restaurant Cozy Kitchen in Caledonia (just east of Rochester, NY) put on a fantastic spread for friends and family. The food was wonderful. If you are anywhere near Caledonia, definitely stop by for breakfast or lunch at Cozy Kitchen.

Dean Green will be the “guest speaker” at church on Sunday (I don’t know what it’s called when you give that day’s sermon) at the United Ministries in Aurora on July 15. Now, I am not saying that you need to go to church because I don't have it in me to say that. But it is good to hear from a friend and so on July 15 if you’re feeling like you’d like to hear from a friend, Sunday a.m. at the United Ministries on Main Street in Aurora may be okay to be.

Our Dean Green is now Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA.

Regarding demons, I think Ray LaMontagne gets it:

"Well I looked my demons in the eyes,
Laid bare my chest, said do your best, destroy me.
You see, I've been to hell and back so many times,
I must admit you kind of bore me.
There's a lot of things that can kill a man,
There's a lot of ways to die,
Listen, some already dead that walk beside me.
There's alot of things I don't understand,
Why so many people lie.
Its the hurt that I hide inside that fuels the fire inside me."

-- Ray LaMontagne, "Empty"