[April breaks global temperature record, marking seven months of new highs.]
lalo alcaraz
Mexican immigrant parents: From my shame to my pride
When I first applied to UCLA, I wrote in my personal essay that I didn’t have any positive role models in my violent neighborhood.
Having grown up in East Los Angeles’ Ramona Gardens housing project, I wrote that most of the adults represented gang members, drug dealers, thieves, tecatos (heroin addicts), alcoholics, felons and high school dropouts (or push-outs). I also wrote about my disdain for housing authority officials and government workers for behaving like prison wardens and guards toward us: project residents who depended on government aid or welfare.
Moreover, I decried the police abuse that I had witnessed and experienced, like the time when a cop pointed a gun at me. My crime: being a 15-year-old making a rolling stop while learning how to drive.
¡Orale! Anti-NDN racism is gone in Cleveland (It’s all over, right?)
Old racist times are they a changin’?
Monday was the day for the long-awaited peace summit between the two opposing subjects of my eerily-accurate anti-mascot cartoon from 2002.
“But dude, I’m honoring you!” came to the Cleveland Indians stadium to apologize to the Native American anti-mascot protester.
Indian Country Today Media Network reports:
Mas…¡Orale! Anti-NDN racism is gone in Cleveland (It’s all over, right?)
