Racial Emergency: The 2007 San Diego Fires

The mainstream media in San Diego, in California as well as at the national level, "celebrated" the fires that hit California several weeks ago, as a sort of "anti-Katrina." The comparision is stupid and self-serving, but ultimately boils down to simply, where so many things went wrong in New Orleans, so many things went right in San Diego.

The rosy image of the fires down here, can in large part be attributed to the complicity of the news media in portraying only the good parts of the story of the fighting of the fires, and not delve into the racism that many communities experienced in terms of not receiving warnings, not receiving supplies, or even being cracked down upon while fleeing the fires.

For those interested in learning this other story of the San Diego fires, which was less than stellar for Native Americans, working class and migrant worker communities and large number of Latinos, please check out the links below.

By the way, I'm pasting below my latest video on Youtube, which is just less than a minute of film from a rally I went to during the fires to support undocumented and poor communities who were largely forgotten during the crisis.





************************

Racial Emergency: The 2007 San Diego Fires from an Ethnic Studies Perspective.
A Panel Discussion featuring, UCSD Ethnic Studies Faculty and Graduate Students (Denise Da Silva, Roberto Alvarez, David Pellow, Pat Washington and Jose Fuste)

Trival Volunteers Tackle Blaze by Scott Gold from the Los Angeles Times

Qualcomm vs. Superdome: Evacuees vs. Refugees by Paul Harris from the OB Rag

The Collision of Capitalism and Nature by Mike Davis from Znet

The Forgotten Victims of the California Wildfires: Undocumented Migrant Workers from Democracy Now!

Fire Days by Maile Arvin on her blog the maile vine

Divided by Fire: Two San Diegos Emerge from the Flames by Justin Akers Chacon

Burn Baby Burn: The California Celebrity Fires by Greg Palast from Znet

A Tale of Two Stadiums by Sharon Smith from Counterpunch

Border Patrol at Qualcomm from Indybay

The Making of a Model Minority in the Midst of a Racial Emergency by Michael Lujan Bevacqua from his blog No Rest for the Awake - Minagahet Chamorro

Rapture Rescue 911: Disaster Response for the Chosen by Naomi Klein from The Nation

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chamoru Love Sayings

Image
A student from my Zoom Chamoru classes recently asked me for some suggestions for some Chamoru sayings or words of wisdom that she could use for a speech she had to give for a friend's wedding.  I get this type of request pretty frequently and so over the years I have a number of lists of ways to say "I Love You" in Chamoru. For years that was one of the my most visited pages on this blog, a simple page that had more than a dozen different ways to say "Hu Guaiya Hao" ranging from the poetic and deep, to the silly and sexy.  When I looked at many of those lists, I realized that the majority of the ways love was expressed, was indeed written in Chamoru, but not necessarily rooted in Chamoru. What I mean by this, is that alot of the sayings were simply translated from English or variants of ways that love would be expressed in English.  For me, I am definitely in support of these sorts of things, I love having our language adapt and take on new forms, especially wh
Read more

Chamorro Public Service Post #15: Pues Adios, Esta Ki

A lot of people end up visiting this blog because they are searching around the internet for lyrics to Chamorro songs. Over the years I’ve pasted a couple here and there, but haven’t really kept up with it as much as I should. I complain all the time about there not being enough internet presence for the Chamorro language and for Chamorro thoughts and so I feel bad when I inadvertently contribute to that absence. På’go, gaige yu’ gi i gima’ iyo-ku grandfather. Desde i ma’pos’ña na mes, kumakatre gui’. Kana’ hineart attack gui’, ya sumaga’ gui’ gi i espitåt para tres meses. Mana’huyong gi i ma’pos na mes, ya sumåsaga’ gui’ gi i gima’, lao ti ha hulat tumohgue sin ayuda. Kada na puengge måtto yu’ gi i gima’-ña para i tetno-hu pumulan gui’. Gi este na tiempo, tåya’ internet, pues siña hu usa este para bai hu fanhasso. Manhasso yu’ put i lina’la’-hu pat i guinife-hu. Buente i chinathinasso-ku siha lokkue’. Tonight, I was trying to figure out what would be the best song to share the lyrics
Read more

Tuleti

Image
I was racking my brain recently to determine what was the first ever Chamorro song that was featured in a motion picture. Noon Sunday was the first every motion picture to be filmed primarily on Guam, prior to that some minor filming had been done on Guam for World War II and Godzilla films but nothing substantial. Noon Sunday was not set in Guam, but it was the first film to feature extensively the island of Guam. Guam was the locale for a fictional Pacific island that was being taken over by a menacing Asian power. Almost all the speaking roles went to people from off-island (from the US or the Philippines), and Chamorros ended up playing most of the "extra" roles. As a result the film didn't feature any Chamorro music. You do find documentaries and television programs, all locally produced that feature Chamorro songs of at least Chamorros singing songs. Guam's History Through Songs, made by the late Carmen Santos is a perfect example of this. For those of you u
Read more