In 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act which prohibits gender discrimination in wages. Back then, women made 59 cents on average for every dollar earned by men.
Fifty years later, women earn only 77 cents for every buck a guy gets, so the battle that Batgirl began is not over.
Mas…‘Equal pay’ battle that Batgirl began is a battle that’s still raging
This corrido by Orange County Celtic-rock homies The Fenians tells the brave and tragic story of the San Patricios, the St. Patrick’s Battalion, formed and led by Jon Riley, a unit of 200 or so mostly Catholic Irish immigrants who fought as part of the Mexican Army against the United States in the Mexican–American War. Most of the battalion’s members had deserted or defected from the United States Army. (Wikipedia.)
Scots-British post-punk The Wakes Band offer their version of the story next. The video’s not much to look at but the lyrics are killer, so read along below:
Mas…The Irish heroes of Aztlan: The San Patricio Batallón (music videos)
I’m often asked, “Where were you born?”
My answer? Houston, Texas.
“Where were your parents born?”
El Paso, Texas.
“Where were your grandparents born?”
El Paso, Texas, Balmorhea, Texas and Ft. Davis, Texas.
That is when people usually start to get frustrated and ask, “Well, where is your family from originally?”
The actual meaning behind this statement is “You are a brown-skinned woman and brown-skinned women are not native to the U.S.”
My answers explain that I am not the stranger. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah were all once part of Mexico, after all.
Mas…Feminists: The struggles of immigrants are our struggles, too
(PNS reporting from TEXAS) After suspending two Latino employees in an Albuquerque, NM store for daring to speak Spanish, specialty grocer Whole Foods has announced that it will be changing its name to “AssWhole Foods.”
Whole Foods PR executive Kaley Quinoa, at the company’s corporate offices in Austin, released this statement:
We feel we need to reflect the public’s view of our changing brand, and nothing would represent this view better than changing our name to AssWhole Foods.
Quinoa explained her company’s “English Only” policies this way
Mas…Flash: English-Only Whole Foods now known as AssWhole Foods
The news broke out of Phoenix late Friday, but to tell you the truth, we weren’t surprised. Judge G. Murray Snow of the United States District Court for Arizona officially declared the policing policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio unconstitutionally “racist.”
The New York Times summed up the decision this way:
… the sheriff relied on racial profiling and illegal detentions to target Latinos, using their ethnicity as the main basis for suspecting they were in the country illegally. Many of the people targeted were American citizens or legal residents.
It took us a while to read the entire ruling but we went through the whole thing and came up with eight additional findings about “America’s toughest sheriff”:
Mas…Sheriff Joe is racist, says Federal judge, and Pocho Ocho other things
(PNS reporting from LONDON) Downton Abbey executive producer Gareth Neame said today that newcomer Gary Coleman’s addition to the British show “will bring interesting twists to the drama.” The cute-as-a-button actor has most recently been seen in various American sitcoms and reality programs.
His Downton character, Arnold Jackson, is described as “a charming and charismatic” young man. The long-awaited addition marks the first time Downton has had an adorable black character.
Mas…PBS ‘Downton Abbey’ series adds first adorable black character
Pochas Elise Roedenbeck and me, Sara Inés Calderón, have a grand old time talking about sexism and feminism. Isn’t it interesting that, even though the U.S. had a “feminist movement,” we have never elected a woman president, and the wage gap between men and women in Latin America is smaller than it is here?
And other sexist stuff: What about football, how sexist is that, ey? And IT? Being a woman in the U.S. may seem like fun and games, given that whole reproductive rights discussion, but there are some downsides.
Mas…Pocha Podcast #2: Sexism, feminism, football and IT (NSFW audio)
Scheme’s 2009 hip-hop video is still true today. Same as it ever was?
Scheme’s latest — La Clika — is here (audio):
(PNS reporting from DIXIE) The City of Morrow, GA voted yesterday to ban “illegal alien paraphernalia.”
City Ordinance 187 — the so-called Press A Tortilla Go to Jail law — is a response to the Supreme Court’s ruling that Arizona SB 1070 was mostly unconstitutional.
The small town (population 4882) banned the sale and use within the city limits of:
“Illegal alien paraphernalia including, but not limited to
The news wasn’t well received among Morrow’s small Hispanic community.
Five-year Morrow resident and Mexico native José Luis Gallegos said, “Qué se vayan a la chingada,” roughly translated as, “This is a heinous law.”
Mas…Small Georgia town bans sale, use of ‘illegal alien paraphernalia’
Citing Malcom X, MLK and Michael Jackson, rapper Coldrank‘s Black Man explores, shall we say, discrepancies in society’s treatment of blacks killing blacks, blacks killing whites and whites killing blacks. And those that don’t learn from history, he reminds us, are doomed to repeat it. Directed by Joe Mexican.
The appeals panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco ruled today that California’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional right to equal protection.
