Hands Together: Flor in her own words

Friday, May 16, 2008

Flor in her own words

By: Raul Gomez. Emille Scheppers contributed to this story.

Flor Crisostomo, is the new person at Adalberto Methodist Chuch in the West Town and Humboldt Park communities of Chicago, where Elvira Arellano was in sanctuary until arrested in Los Angeles last summer.

Mrs. Crisostomo is from the Zapotec Native American group in Mexico's Southern State of Oaxaca. She was one of the thousand or more employees of IFCO Pallet Company arrested in April 2006, and has exhausted all legal appeals to stay in United States, and received the famous letter ordering her to report for deportation. Her children are back in Mexico, so her situation does not hinge on the issue of US citizen children, but they do depend on her remittances to survive.

She is trying to draw attention to the role of US trade and economic policies, like NAFTA in impoverishing the Mexican countryside and thereby contributing to the undocumented immigration situation, as well as to the problems with US immigration law and the raids. They quote her as wanting to end the system of undocumented labor without mentioning that she means by legalization of the undocumented and changes in US and Mexican trade policy.

What follows are statements that Mrs. Crisostomo shared with me, Raul Gomez, a high school student at El Cuarto Año, a school in Humboldt Park, a community in Chicago:

How can it be that in this stage of the struggle people don't understand that the person with fewer benefits is me? I don’t have kids that are US citizens or a husband who is a citizen. And I would never have married in order to get legal status.

In this part of the struggle, I practically had to take a definite step to bring attention to what’s going on within our community.

The support is really strong within this community above all because of the Puerto Ricans. But more than anything this campaign is to raise political consciousness. Political education is what our people need.

For many people it’s easy to ask: Why did she take refuge in the church? What she wants to do is legalize her status.

I am a refugee and I will be one until they respect the community. What I’m doing is not for me. It’s for my family that’s here undocumented and my people that are undocumented. This is why I’m doing this act, if you want to call it, of rebellion. The only thing left for me is arrest and deportation and I don’t want the same things to keep on happening.

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NEW GROUP AFFIRMS ITS AFRO-LATINO IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE AGAINST RACISM

By Sijisfredo Avilés

The Afro-Latin@ Institute of Chicago was recently inaugurated at the San Lucas United Methodist Church.. Its mission is to help strengthen research and build activist networks among Latinos of African descent in the United States. Carlos Flores, chair of the institute, explained that the organization “questions the separation of Black versus Brown” and is proposing “a unifying Black and Brown agenda.“ Some Blacks are also Latinos — and that many Latinos are victims of racial as well as cultural discrimination,” he said. Afro-Latinos are here to stay, and “we will not continue to be invisible.”

As if to illustrate, Dr. Ricardo Millet, formerly of the Woods Fund and the Kellogg Foundation, related how, when he arrived in the U.S. as a student from Panama to attend an East Coast school, he waited at the station to be picked up by his host family. Millet waited and waited, but the family did not show up. He finally called them. The family said they had gone to the station but did not recognize him. They told him they only saw a Black person at the bus terminal, not a Latino."

Afro-Latinos are often 'invisible' in the history textbooks of their home countries, too" said another speaker. "For example, few people know that the army of Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator of South America, was composed of large numbers of blacks who joined Bolivar on the promise that his movement would abolish slavery."

"It is the same story in Latin America and here in the United States,” said a musician from the Spiritual Journey Percussion Ensemble. “The contributions of people of the African diaspora are ignored and not recognized.” Izabel Leme-Harris, host of the radio program “Gateway to Brazil,” said many people in U.S. think that Brazil’s population is mostly white, when the reality is that Brazil has the largest black population in the continent. The marginalization of blacks in politics, education and entertainment contributes to that impression, she said, not only in Brazil but also elsewhere in Latin America.

A member of the audience noted how racism causes “many problems of alienation and division.” He related his experiences as a poor, black child in Puerto Rico. Each day, his sixth-grade teacher called him to the front of the class to ridicule him about his clothes, and to demonstrate that because he was poor and black, he was not intelligent or worthy enough to be in school.

Another person said, “That is why the institute is very important, so that we all know our true history and accomplishments as a people in Latin America and here in the U.S.”

The program concluded with a musical and dance celebration from Sones de Mexico, the Spiritual Journey Percussion Ensemble, Africaribe, Nuestro Tambó and Grupo Yuba, all of which showed how “the spirit of Mother Africa survives in the New World,” as one person said. The audience responded enthusiastically.

For information about the activities or to become a member of this organization contact Carlos Flores, Afro-Latin@ Institute of Chicago, San Lucas United Methodist Church, 2914 West North Ave., Chicago IL 60647. E-mail: afrolatinstitute@sbcglobal.net.

FREEDOM, WELL-BEING OR OPPRESSION: THE GREAT ENIGMA OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.

By Arquímides Stevenson-Carrillo

Are we perhaps puppets or victims of the reality of an utopia democracy where we live?

When I moved to United States I did it convinced that I would come to a nation full of opportunities, peace and freedom. Nevertheless, the reality I have lived has been another one.

Since my arrival to the yearned for "Land of the American Dream", I have experienced the hysteria that one lives every day in our diverse communities and, in my case, the life I have experienced here in the Logan Square and Humboldt Park communities of Chicago, Illinois.

Here one lives a collective hysteria created by unscrupulous people who benefit from the excessive enrichment and the concentration of power. At the same time these are the "birds of prey" who accuse the gangs, the poor people and to the most disadvantaged of the social crises and the evils that affect our environment; without admitting that society is a reflection of their government and political leadership.

I found a society full of absurd regulations and restrictions that in anything contribute to the quality of life and well-being of the individual. When I go out I can feel the injustices of the government and its other entities. For example, the police, whose mission is to provide security and protection, abuses its law given power to create legal cases against innocent young people. Crime, unemployment and poverty reach high rates while the government spends public funds in frivolous and superficial items.

At the same time, the social inequality and bad distribution of wealth reaches almost all the spheres of society leaving behind thousands of families without homes, medical insurance and food.

To this you add the 911 incident, which transcendentally changed the way to make public policy and inaugurated the imposition of laws that control our daily decisions and activities. As a result of that so called extreme preventive security, we feel intimidated in airports, train stations, parks, festivals, in short, in all public places.

From a practical point of view, I think that national security can be handled strategically by establishing an assertive logistic that entails prevention, effective planning and citizen education.

It is not just that psychological terrorism is continually fed to people and that unnecessary conflicts like the war in Iraq that obviously contribute nothing to the common welfare are organized. The system has used its foreign policy simply to advance the private and economic interests of the few.

Doubtlessly in this search of the coveted "American dream" I have found a nightmare of which it has not been easy for me to escape. As of now, the solution is to encourage citizen participation and train new leaders so that they take charge of the future of humanity

Hands Together

Friday, May 16, 2008

Flor in her own words

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NEW GROUP AFFIRMS ITS AFRO-LATINO IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE AGAINST RACISM

FREEDOM, WELL-BEING OR OPPRESSION: THE GREAT ENIGMA OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.

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