¡Despierta Boricua!

Today is the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Contrary to what you may (or may not) have heard, the parade isn’t a rape fest, or an organized crime spree. The following was posted by a Boricua* for the NY Post several years ago and it features the many highlights of what is still one of the largest (if not the largest) outdoor event in the U.S. A little personal side note: one of my sisters was a PR Parade Beauty queen (in the mid 70s).

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“Grito de Lares” by Augusto Marin

El Grito de Lares: Several hundred women and men revolted against Spain for Puerto Rican independence on Sept. 23, 1868. The main leader was Ramón Betances. The insurrection failed because the upper class was apathetic, the rebels lacked adequate training and equipment, and because the Spanish authorities knew (with the help of Puerto Rican traitors -- aka conservatives) of the rebels' plans in advance.

-=[ Puerto Rican Parade ]=-

50 Greatest Moments

By Eneida del Valle

Last Updated: 5:00 AM, June 6, 2007 / Posted: 5:00 AM, June 6, 2007

From beauty queens who marched in heels to politicians who sported fake smiles to win some votes, to the controversial 'Seinfeld' episode, the Puerto Rican Parade has made Big Apple history for over half a century.

March 1958: Leaders from the Puerto Rican community decide to break away from the Hispanic Day Parade and create the Puerto Rican Day Parade. According to an editorial in "El Diario," the main objective of the Hispanic Day Parade, which was mainly run by Puerto Ricans, is to unite all peoples of the Spanish language. The Puerto Rican Day Parade is founded by Victor Lopez, the march’s first president; coordinator Jose “Chuito” Caballero; Peter Ortiz; Luisa Quintero; Luis Amando Feliciano; Vicente Hernández; Angel M. Arroyo; Atanacio Rivera Feliciano; and Amalio Maisanave Ríos.

April 1958: The first Puerto Rican Day parade is held on Fifth Avenue on April 14 as 5,000 Boricuas march in front of a crowd of 125,000. It’s a huge success, receiving a hail of positive reviews from the media. The Herald Tribune says, “There are longer and larger parades but none encompass the spirit of the Puerto Rican Day Parade,” and the New York Times says, “The Puerto Ricans have taken over Fifth Avenue.” Then-New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner is quoted in the New York Times, as saying “The Puerto Ricans have demonstrated their civic and cultural contributions to the City of New York.” But what really got tongues wagging was when Gloria Burgos, the queen of the parade, and her court, walked all 34 blocks in high heels after the float she was supposed to appear on never showed up. Attendees included then-Governor of Puerto Rico Don Luis Muñoz Marin and Oscar González Suarez, Esq. as the Grand Marshall.

April 12, 1959: The second parade goes off -- but not without a hitch. Community leaders and the media form an alliance called Un Frente Unido por un Solo Desfile (A United Front for One Parade) in an effort to unite the Hispanic Day Parade and the Puerto Rican Day Parade, urging organizers for unity and harmony. But to no avail. The president of the parade, Mr. Victor Lopez, is quoted in El Diario de Nueva York as saying, “The parade will definitely not unite with any other Hispanic parade in New York City.” Despite the 40-degree weather, it’s attended by 160,000 people and more than 10,000 people make their way up Fifth Avenue. Then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller is in attendance.

April 1960 & 1961: Parade continues its success up Fifth Avenue with more than 165,000 in attendance both years.

June 1962: It’s official! The parade is held on June 10, the second Sunday in June and that date has not changed since. In order to have the legislators from the main island attend the parade – they’re all tied up until May 30 -- organizers decide to change the date to accommodate them and the route is extended from 44th-86th streets. Good thing they waited! The ‘62 parade is billed as the best, brightest, biggest and most expensive ever, costing $100,000 with 50 floats and 40 bands -- and half a million Boricuas in attendance. Yet it was former Mayor of San Juan Felisa Rincón who stole the show. Instead of staying with the rest of the politicians at the stage on 64th Street, she made the decision to ride in a convertible, causing an outpouring of love and support from the crowd.

The War On Drugs Is A Failure, So Why The Flip Flop, Barack? [VIDEO]

So umm, the "War in Drugs" turns 40-years-old this month, and......

Since 1971, more than 40 million arrests have been conducted for drug-related offenses.

And no group has been more targeted and suffered more damage than the black community. As the A.C.L.U. pointed out last week, “The racial disparities are staggering: despite the fact that whites engage in drug offenses at a higher rate than African-Americans, African-Americans are incarcerated for drug offenses at a rate that is 10 times greater than that of whites.”

[...] Last week, the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a 19-member commission that included Kofi Annan, a former U.N. secretary general; George Shultz, President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state; and Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, declared that: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”

The White House immediately shot back: no dice. The Obama administration presented a collection of statistics that compared current drug use and demand with the peak of the late 1970s, although a direct correlation between those declines and the drug war are highly debatable. In doing so, it completely sidestepped the human, economic and societal toll of the mass incarceration of millions of Americans, many for simple possession.

No need to put a human face on 40 years of folly when you can swaddle its inefficacy in a patchwork quilt of self-serving statistics. (source)

I'm not going to say the obvious as the current administration's desire to escalate the war on drugs by an increase in funding in 2012 bringing spending to $26 billion. We out here in the streets are all aware that this is yet another investment in the very profitable Prison Industrial Complex. I mean why else is there a proposed increase in funding for federal prisons, right? So no, I'm not going to state the obvious. The important question, is just why did Barack change his stance on the war on drugs? What happened to the guy in 2004 who supports the decriminalization of certain illegal substances and doing things differently? Anyone wanna take a stab at answering this question?

After Passing Nation's Toughest Immigration Law, Alabama Set To Be Whitest State

Don't look now, but if you live in the state of Alabama or just happen to be passing through, don't ever get the appitite for Mexican food, because the state has just outlawed it. OK, so I'm only kidding; but, don't be surprised if the fine folks in Alabama's state government decides to do just that eventually. After all, as of September 1st, 2011, they will have the dubious distinction of being the state with the toughest anti-immigration immigration laws. Oh you think Arizona's shenanigans were bad? Checkout what Alabama has done:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama vaulted past Arizona on Thursday with what is being called the most restrictive law in the nation against illegal immigration, requiring schools to find out if students are in the country lawfully and making it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.

Advocacy groups promised to challenge the sweeping measure, which like Arizona's law also allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant if the person is stopped for some other reason. In addition, it requires all businesses to check the legal status of workers using a federal system called E-Verify.

"It is clearly unconstitutional. It's mean-spirited, racist, and we think a court will enjoin it," said Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It takes effect Sept. 1.

Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed it into law Thursday, expressed confidence it would withstand any legal challenges.

"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," he said. "I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws, and I'm proud of the Legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country."

Alabama has an estimated 120,000 illegal immigrants, a nearly fivefold increase from a decade ago, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Many of them are believed to be working on farms, at chicken processing plants and in construction.

One of the legislation's sponsors, GOP Sen. Scott Beason, said it would help the unemployed by preventing illegal immigrants from getting jobs in the state. Alabama's unemployment rate stood at 9.3 percent in April, the most recent figure available.

"This will put thousands of Alabamians back in the work force," Beason said.

I don't know just the estimated legal workforce population in the state of Alabama. However, the total population of the state is somewhere around 5 million according to data from the Census Bureau's 2009 figures. That would mean, that there must be a lot of people not able or allowed to work (you know, like those fat rednecks riding those hoverounds at Walmart) if 120,000 undocumented workers have stolen all the jobs. Either that or their weren't enough jobs to begin with down in good Ole Alabama.

Jackson, MS Alternative School Feeding the School to Prison Pipeline

Schools are supposed to be about educating kids, right? They are supposed to be safe places for students to learn and grow. It is bad enough when students have to fear going to school because other students have disciplinary issues that the administration is incompetent to address, but now, schools are moving towards policies similar to prisons.

Yesterday, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal class action lawsuit against Jackson Public School District in Mississippi for allowing an alternative school to shackle and handcuff students for hours on end as punishment for the most minor infractions, like speaking too loudly or not wearing a belt.  

 At Capital City Alternative School, administration would actually shackle students to railings and poles, then walk away and leave them tied up and unsupervised like dogs. One student, shackled to a railing for the entire school day for not wearing a belt, had no choice but to eat his lunch handcuffed. Other examples of the school’s bondage punishment policy include a 15-year-old girl handcuffed to a railing for hours after greeting a friend too loudly in the hallway and a student who was shackled up for not wearing the right colored shoes.

 The SPLC filed the lawsuit after the school district refused to respond to a letter asking that the school’s strict punishment policy be stopped.  SOURCE

OK, now discipline is one things, but handcuffing kids for hours at a time for the most minor infractions? That is criminal, in my opinion.

Of course, if you go to the website of Capital City Alternative School, they pose a really pretty picture of their institution. One of their stated goals is to " create a climate where students feel safe in the educational environment" I do not know about anyone else, but frankly, I would feel far from "safe" if I knew that I could be shackled for hours as a form of "discipline".

The ACLU alleges that this extremely punitive environment is designed purposely to push the most challenging students out of the school. Now, if these children are already in an alternative school, they obviously do not have any options to complete their education elsewhere. So, what choice are they left with??

An alternative school should be designed with the end goal of teaching children the skills they need to adapt to the regular school environment AND to every day life. This school seems to be teaching children how to be prisoners. And, since the school wants to push out the children who have the most challenges to face, they are feeding the school to prison pipeline.

Is this effective education? If the administrators of Capital City Alternative School are not up to the task of educating the most challenging pupils, then they need to just get out of the game, and leave room for new people who actually give a damn what happens to the kids!

The Friday Sex Blog [Games]

Please leave Weiner’s dick alone. He’s not sick, nor is there any evidence that he committed any crime. The worst you can accuse himn of is using poor judgment for about a week (as he went around denying his masturbatory fantasies). Resign, you say? Why should he? Clinton didn’t, Craig didn’t, Vitter didn’t, and up until recently (when he realized he would be kicked out of the Senate) Ensign wasn’t thinking about resigning. Weiner shouldn’t.


Are you one of the dolts asking, “Why would he do this after he was married?” Lemme see... maybe because members of congress (like members of the human race) get horny sometimes? And sometimes male members of congress, like many members of the male (and female) sex, think with their genitals? And sometimes men -- even married men -- jerk off on internet porn? Weiner was horny and went online and flirted and spanked the monkey a few times. He created his own porn, his own interactive porn, like millions of other Americans have done, and continue to do, every fuckin’ day. And the Internet provided Wiener with the same thing it provides for tens of millions of other men (and women) in monogamous relationships: needed release and safe variety.


And yeah, if you’re married, your man has a secret stash of porn hidden somewhere in the house, and he’s jerked off on an image of someone other than you. And it’s quite probable that he’s fucked you at least once while fantasizing about another woman. And any man that denies it is either a liar, or a sexually motivated serial killer.

Brother X-Squared Returns: Speaks On Barack Obama, Herman Cain, & Has A Shocking Revalation

The We Are Respectable Negroes News Network (WARNNN) is proud to bring you the latest installment in our recurring series of interviews with Brother X-Squared, president of the North American Chapter of the Renewed Black Panther Party.

As long time followers of WARNNN already know, Brother X-Squared is a potent activist, black futurist, and visionary thinker. He is also a noted cultural critic in the greatest tradition of African American commentary and letters. It has been six months since we last spoke with Brother X-Squared. He has been incommunicado and apparently in hiding. Brother X-Squared has promised us an explosive and jaw dropping expose on the future of America. Brother X-Squared has teased that his appearance on WARNNN will be of particular import to Chauncey DeVega, Editor and Founder of We Are Respectable Negroes.

WARNNN: Brother X-Squared, it has been too long. Where have you been? What have you been up to? What is this information that you are going to share with me? Are you safe? Where were you hiding?

Brother X-Squared: Silence child! I see that my absence has allowed your mental musculature and integumentary system of melanin wisdom to atrophy like the little penis of that white sex freak Anthony Weiner from New York. Brother X-Squared is never in hiding! Can you hide from the sun? From its heat? From its rays? The sun and the moon are in a dance and it is only cosmic forces that keep me from irradiating you 24 hours a day! I have taught you so much since we met those years ago. Yet, in my absence it seems that you have taken 5 steps backwards for every 1 step forward! Try again. This time with patience and be deliberate in your speech.

WARNNN: My humble apologies. What have you been up to these last few months? Were they productive?

Brother X-Squared: A little better. Do cicadas come out at night and sing the blues for moon crickets when the slave ship is coming into port?

WARNNN: You lost me, Brother X-Squared...

Brother X-Squared: Even in your confusion and stupidity there is truth. You truly are one of the lost mentally captive negroes in this hellish land called Amerikkka. Once more you do not understand the Negro folk wisdom. Sad. Tragic. Even the evil White Man knows of my wisdom and is making a special computer that can translate metaphors from different languages so that the CIA can spy on people. They will never create a cipher that can beat Brother X-Squared...but that is a talk for another time.

Chauncey, you need to get a copy of Laurence Levine's book Black Culture and Black Consciousness so you can learn something about your own great heritage as a Nubian! The answer is yes! I have been productive! I have put plans into motion that are still bearing fruit, I am a perpetual self sustaining nuclear reactor that is powered by my melanin. I have foreseen the decline of America. It is here as we speak! The visions came to me while I led a special month long training retreat for my soldiers in the North American Chapter of the New Black Panther Party.

WARNNN: What did you discover?

Lauryn Hill: Pregnant Again, & Killing Bitches Softly

So Lauryn Hill announced recently that she is currently pregnant with her sixth child. Yep, way to go Lauryn!!! But it would seem that this announcement has a few sisters around the interwebs a bit upset. According to them and their chatter, this is so not good news. Supposedly, Lauryn has been having all these babies by Rohan Marley, son of the late great Bob Marley, who is a married man. And of course having six kids by a married man just ain't the thing to do. Yes, Lauryn Hill's vagina has been making Black women look bad.

Now what I'm about to say my seem highly hypocritical given the way I pretty much shitted on Fanbtasia last year for getting caught up and becoming pregnant by a married man (read here). But this one is a little bit different, folks. In my defense, I'ma be real: Fantasia ain't no Lauryn Hill. Not shitting on Fantasia again, but, the only sisters she has ever given a sense of empowerment too is your everyday alleged hood rat. You might not agree, but that's what I think. Besides, if hood rats were really empowered by Fantasia, her shit would sell more than Lauryn's "Miseducation..." album, thus giving Fantasia the opportunity to be on a 25yr hiatus, but I digress.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Black women upset because Lauryn Hill's vagina is making all Black women look bad, "because you know how they always look at Black women as trifling single women on welfare 'n shit, RiPPa." Alright, so yes, this stereotype has been around forever and a day now, but using Lauryn Hill being a single Black mother as emblematic of a problem supposedly exclusive to Black women? Umm, get the fuck outta here with that bullshit. No seriously, miss me with garbage, people. Y'all are too caught up in what them white folks certain people think about you. Yes, all of a sudden y'all scared to eat fried chicken and watermelon in public, because, well, you know to do so will make you "too Black" in the eyes of white folks... who do the same thing.

Stop the bullshit, people...

Listen ladies, Lauryn Hill can have six kids by a married man if she so chooses. She represents Lauryn, and by extension the Hill family, and not all Black women. Unless she owes you babysitting money, shut your damn mouth. Besides, she still has Fugees money, and isn't down at the social services office signing up for Section 8 and Food Stamps. And, she's able to avoid doing that because "Killing Me Softly" is still number one in some third world country right now. She can afford to have a small African village fall out of her coochie should she choose. But you on the other hand? You wrote poems in high school that will never be published; you're single, broke, and you're mad you never got your tubes tied after baby number three. Yep, hardly a position of female empowerment; but the struggle continues.

*fist in the air*

Oh, Didn't Get Any Inauguration Tickets Either, Did You Lupe Fiasco?

Look, I don't know Lupe Fiasco personally, and for all I know he might be the type of person to steal his co-workers lunch out of the refrigerator at work. But as an Hip Hop artist and entertainer? I have madd respect for the brother especially given his content is not-so-mainstream and full of substance. But that's just me, and apparently he said some shit recently that has folks around the Internet kinda ticked off just a tad bit.

Now of course you know you cannot be Black and say anything deemed negative about president Barack Obama unless you're a Republican which pretty much makes you De facto racist. So of course a few of my brothers and sisters are pitching a bitch about this specific part of the entire interview:

"In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. For me, I’m trying to fight the terrorism that’s actually causing the other forms of terrorism. The root cause of the terrorism is the stuff that you as a government allow to happen and the foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists. And it’s easy for us because it’s really just some oil, which we can really get on our own. I don’t vote. I don’t get involved in the political process because it’s meaningless, to be honest. I’m a real big believer if I’m gonna vouch for someone, then I’m gonna stand behind everything that they do. So politicians aren’t gonna do that because I don’t want you to bomb some village in the middle of nowhere." - Lupe Fiasco

Personally I understand and empathize with the somewhat tribal response to this. That being, the perennial need to defend America's first Black president from critique by Black folks. But be that as it may, let's stop pretending that this country has become less of a purveyor of imperialism which is rooted in economic benefit and not the need to spread democracy as it says. Let's stop pretending and keep it real as the young folks say. Let's not pretend that there isn't some truth to what Lupe says. Surely this didn't all stop in January, 2009.

Now as far as his views on voting? They are his own; and please believe, there are many who share his view. In the 2008 presidential elections, according to reports by the Census Bureau, Of the total population of eligible voters (225, 499 million 18 & older), only 58% of them voted, and 94, 355 million people did not. Now, the question that begs to be asked to Lupe's point is: did it really make a difference? If more people voted in 2008 would there be less corporate welfare at the expense of the working class?

No seriously, I'd really appreciate an answer.

Prisoner Threatens To Cut Off Penis, Sues State For Not Providing Him A Sex Change

Lemme be clear on something: I fully support the human rights of all incarcerated prisoners. Yes, I believe that like any free man or woman, they too have the right to be treated fairly; and more importantly, they shouldn't be exposed to, or have to deal with inhumane treatment.

Yes, even as hard as it may be to police, prisoners should be protected from prison rape which is a huge problem in and of itself. We joke about that type of stuff on the outside, but being violated sexually even in prison ain't cool; and it damn sure ain't funny. No matter the gender of the victim, it's a violation.

OK, so now that I got that out of the way. Umm, so like, what the fuck is this bullshit?? No seriously; the fuck is up with this man threatening to cut his dick off in prison?!! OK, so you you're a woman trapped in a man's body and you'd like to have a sex change to clear up your gender identity issues.

OK, yeah, I support that. Shit, I'm down with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and all that. But nigga you're in fuckin' prison! You don't threaten to cut ya schlong off yourself because you can't take the being a man thing anymore; and when they take the razor away, you friggin sue them because they refuse to oblige your request for a sex change? Seriously, a sex change?!!

Excuse me, but err, umm... can I get an order of Negro please with a throat-chop on the side for this brotha? Clearly he has lost his rabbit-ass mind.

DILLWYN, Va. – Crouched in her cell, Ophelia De’lonta hoped three green disposable razors from the prison commissary would give her what the Virginia Department of Corrections will not — a sex change.

It had been several years since she had felt the urges, but she had been fighting them for weeks. But like numerous other times, she failed to get rid of what she calls “that thing” between her legs, the last evidence she was born a male.

Months after the October castration attempt, De’lonta filed a federal lawsuit Friday claiming the state has failed its duty to provide adequate medical care because it won’t give her the operation.

She says the surgery is needed to treat her gender identity disorder, a mental illness in which people believe they were born the wrong gender.

If she wins, De’lonta would be the nation’s first inmate to receive a state-funded sex change operation. Similar lawsuits have failed in a handful of other states, and lawmakers in some states are trying to ban the use of taxpayer money for the operations.

If she loses, she says she will continue to try self-surgery — acknowledging another attempt could kill her.

“That’s a possibility,” the 50-year-old said during a recent prison interview, pausing then smiling contently. “But at the end I would have peace.”

See, this is another case of giving a muthafucka too much rope and now he wants to be a fucking cowboy. No seriously; according to the story this cat won a court order in 2004 to have hormone pills administered to him. Well shit, is it that easy in Virginia? Lemme get this right: in Virginia prisons, religious practice be damned, they've banned men from having and growing beards - which is unconstitutional. But an inmate can wake up one day and petition the court for hormone pills to make them feel and appear like the opposite sex?

WikiLeaks Cable: Obama Admin. Pressured Haiti Not to Raise Minimum Wage

Eco.Soul.Intellectual

What can you buy for 61 cents? In the case of the Obama Administration, that was simply too much for the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Wikileaks cables expose that the Obama Administration put pressure on the disaster-stricken country, Haiti, to not raise its hourly minimum wage to 61 cents an hour, or $5 a day.

Perplexing being that everything in Haiti has skyrocketed since the January 2009 earthquake. A large can of peaches is reported to be roughly $40 American dollars by Haitian activist Mawiyah Duperval of Haitian American Ministries and Ujaama International based in Haiti.

According to the report by the Columbia Journalism Review, American corporations who hire Haiti's 25,000 garment workers, like Hanes and Levi Strauss, were pissed off because that meant they had to pay their workers an increase. So let's put this together, a pair of Hanes' underwear costs more than a worker making about 200 of them in a day.

Since the earthquake there has been much criticism of the lack of aid that actually went directly to the Haitian government, less than 7 cents, the question remains "Where is the money?" According to a Huffington Post article back in 2010, here was the breakdown.