Las True Stories of San Antonio

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Wed, 3 May 2017 19:09:00 -0500

Today is Tuesday, May 3rd, and so much has happened. A brain tumor. More yoga and walking. A little less combat. Weight dropping. Spirit rising. Back in the city, where I belong. Looking for good photos to give you, organizing my crazy files.

And a new President! So much to say, more than beating up on him -- that will only take us so far. Time to hit the streets, challenge the fears that he represents. Don't be afraid, no tengan miedo. If I survived a massive brain tumor -- big as a grapefruit -- we can survive and transcend this.

More tomorrow. One day a week from now on.

Can I get a VIA Bus after my cerveza?

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:28:00 -0500

Okay, so today I met with Juan Lopez, who, like me, rides the VIA bus.

If you live in the city, the bus is pretty good if you're going north/south. It's the crosstown buses and the 551 Looper that drives me crazy. I wish they were more colorful, like in Mexico, and that the drivers were allowed to play their music! This Calvinist heritage! But I love the bus. Babies, tattoos, the elderly, ride the bus.
Humanity. For reals.

Today, Juan said something really profound.

"If the city is so concerned about DWIs (Los borrachos, he means), then why doesn't VIA offer
24-hour service during Fiesta?"

Are you listening, VIA?

I know you offer special service for the basketball games, the Rodeo,
And God knows what else...

Or is the City wanting the fines from the DWIs or maybe just wants to put more borrachos in jail?

http://www.viasmartmove.com

The tragedy of my family

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 23:29:00 -0500

I am the oldest of eight. I am going to tell you something my siblings won't face -- the drugging and drinking that has destroyed us as a family.

Alcohol. Drugs. All my siblings, addicted now or in the past, except me and the disabled Daniel. The reason for prison, death, and jail and/or -- for three of my brothers -- each a separate story but the same one too.

My father, Roberto Renaud, passed away a few weeks ago. He was 95 years old, and had spent the last three years in a nursing home here in San Antonio, Texas. He was a brutal father, but he tried. He tried. A sharecropper who worked infinite hours in the Texas Panhandle. A WWII veteran.

His family, an old Tejano family, has a family plot, a camposanto, outside of Raymondville. It's all the family has left after the U.S. Mexican War. It's a windswept acre of land a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico that includes our family's graves beginning in the 20th century. My grandparents, great-uncles and aunts, cousins, are all buried there.

My father saved the money from his Social Security check to pay for his casket so he could be buried there too. And for the 21-gun salute.

My brothers and sisters are all well-educated. Out of the eight of us, six of us finished college and five have advanced degrees. The youngest has a Ph.D. My father didn't get to finish high school. My mother was forced to leave school in the second grade.

They were not perfect -- this is one of the themes of my novel. But they dreamed for us. Oh, they dreamed, sacrificed, worked and worked some more. This is all they knew. My mother died of chronic alcoholism. My father had a slow and difficult death because of his emphysema.

We suffered too, their divorce when I was in graduate school. And maybe this is why none of my siblings came to Daddy's funeral except my youngest brother. One of the brothers, still on parole, was just arrested on DWI...and couldn't make it. (He had written to me prior saying he wasn't gonna come anyway)

Their children didn't come either. Only Charlie's son, from the brother who died years ago, and who brought his children. He gives me hope,

Several had announced they weren't coming to the funeral, including the Dharma leader in Oakland.
Nothing new there. She didn't attend our mother's funeral, either. Says she won't be coming to my disabled brothers funeral, and he surely hasn't done anything to her.

Only the one in Poland who escaped from all this wanted to come, and he couldn't afford it.

Because I've confronted each of my siblings about their addictions, I am hated and scorned. Now I know how cruelty continues -- from one generation to the next and the next.

I will get over this. Friends tell me that mine is the most dysfunctional family they've ever seen.

I have loved my family. But they have chosen their fears, their drugs and drinking, their past memories of God-knows-what instead of what we might-have-been. They obviously don't want or can't be in this family. To be buried side by side in a Texas camposanto.

http://www.expressnews.com/obituaries/article/Renaud-loved-the-land-sacrificed-for-kin-5291688.php

Tray on was on my bus the other day

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 09:45:00 -0500

Because of my brain surgery, I haven't been able to drive. A few weeks ago, two teenage black men got on the 550 bus during rush hour. In Texas, if you don't have a car, that is a liability, because we really don't have good mass trans.

The taller kid was in a mood, and they sat at the front, which is generally reserved for mothers with babies, elders, and wheelchair riders. The young man, let's call him Trey, sat besides an older, dishevled, white guy who was taking all the leg room, rocking to his IPod music.

Trey told the white guy to make room, but the white guy, let's call him Mr. Z, didn't move an inch. He was not about to be instructed by someone like him. I could smell his fear. Their voices got louder and louder, amidst the clamor of voices, the smoky, sweaty, murmuring of working-class accents, and the roaring bus.

Young man, what has your mother taught you?

The teenager looked at the older black woman behind him, and stopped fidgeting and elbowing.
He was about to explode and show this old guy...Then

Silence.

Trey's manhood was wounded. Somehow, her churchy voice penetrated. It won't always be like this, she seemed to say. It's not worth it. You are just as good as him.

He got off at the next stop.

My Sister the Buddhist Who

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 13:11:00 -0500

Susana didn't come to my mother, her mother's, funeral in 2000.
Says she's not coming to my father's funeral, who is in hospice care in a nursing home.
And hasn't visited our disabled brother in twelve years.

I know she thinks she's too good for Texas. Well, so is Wendy Davis.

She is a licensed therapist, and a dharma leader in the Bay Area.

D H A R M A. She yelled this to me as I was recovering from brain surgery in February.

Tell me, how did she enter the helping and healing professions?

La Bloga: Poetry: Laurie Ann Guerrero, Pablo Miguel Martínez, AWP, "Haciendo Caminos," the First Biennial U.S. Latina/Latino Literary Theory and Criticism Conference, Immigration Art y Mas--

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sun, 3 Mar 2013 12:25:00 -0600

La Bloga: Poetry: Laurie Ann Guerrero, Pablo Miguel Martínez, AWP, "Haciendo Caminos," the First Biennial U.S. Latina/Latino Literary Theory and Criticism Conference, Immigration Art y Mas--

Los perros finos de San Antonio

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:46:00 -0500

They are all over the city, running geese with tails and woofs. Many have mange, others have the signs of wounded battles, and others are like these, bones and waiting for the last day. Los perros flacos, and I saw this one a few weeks ago when I was reading at the Memorial Library on Culebra. There are two of them: one is a black pit, I call him "Negro," who loves me now, and this white one, "La Flaca," her bones crackle when she walks. Negro runs the show, I guess.

You need to get rid of these dogs, the homeowner says. She says that people dump dogs here, and the City hasn't been able to catch them. Since I've been feeding them, they come to me, and Negro jumped into my van this morning. He's ready to go. You ready for the doggie garden? It was the deer strips, I think.

The lady lawyer from San Antonio

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 11:24:00 -0500

Introducing Ofelia Delgado, graduate of St. Mary's University in San Antonio. Here she is telling me she gets the bar results in November! Pray and shout for her! Im gonna pray to la santa de abogadas...Ofelia's been desperate for work and now has a part-time job, and has dreams, big ones She used to work on behalf of women at the Peace Initiative. Of course she owes money everywhere after three years of law school. A woman like this, who cares so much, who speaks fluent Spanish, is worth a zillion bucks with this smile, verdad?

In San Antonio, a city not about The Alamo

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 10:57:00 -0500

There is music here. A tango of polkas played with accordion. There is kindness that fills the ache of lovelost that this city repairs in your soul from its people. It's not the margaritas, it's the people who make you smile and laugh again. I don't know where this comes from, exactly, but I know that
part of it is from being hated for so long, and how love is the only response to make it better.

This city is not about the Alamo, but the alamo -- the cottonwood trees the mission was named for, and the wet of fall and faces who have come this far. This is not a perfect city, no, it is troubled too. But when I saw this yesterday, I had to take this photo because Day of the Dead is coming on November 1st. And in the days leading to this, our Halloween of telling those who have passed that they will get their favorite meal and drink that day, maybe a cold cervezita, here is my San Antonio. (Upside down cause I can't fix it, but hey, it's the calavera doing it).

Why I haven't written

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 20:58:00 -0500

I don't know. My laptop was stolen this summer. Then I had to move, find homes for the cats and Perez my dog. Can't take them where I live now. The Willie Velasquez project is wearing me down. I know that it will help million of students but I can't seem to get my community, especially the activist women, to understand what I'm doing and how much help my team needs. It's such a beautiful story of a boy's calling, and how he changes the world. Yet I can't get my fellow activists to see what I've embarked on -- for all of us. If we'd had some funding the interactive would be out by now and I could start working on the Lydia Mendoza book like I want. Instead I'm so tired, want a vacation, haven't been to a doctor in 15 years and I guess I'm gonna go all crippled with a pauper's funeral. Why doesn't my community value our work more? We deserve so many stories, this is the freedom we are searching for. So much I want to say. About the power to tell our story. I don't back down. But it is so hard.

The boy made of lightningJust finished reading Nurrudin Farah novel, Secrets. He uses Italian, his Somalian, French, Spanish. Why is this ok and I couldn't and get respect for Willie Velasquez's Tex-mex language? Last night I heard the beautiful poetry of a great poet who lives here -- she wrote about Costa Rica, Peru, the Dominican Republic. But the Westside doesn't count. So we don't count in her poems.

Daddy, 93 years old, is the Valentine's Day King at the nursing home

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:20:00 -0600

I am the oldest of eight, with all the expectations that come with it. Because I'm also a writer and an artist, I have disappointed my siblings, and my father thinks I'm very successful -- he has to think that, I"m the oldest. My father was a demanding man, a World War II veteran, and a man who dreams of working on his tractor again. He doesn't remember the whippings he gave me, and I barely remember it myself. This year, he's been named the Valentine's Day King at the nursing home where he lives here in San Antonio. I cut his hair last night and gave him a manicure -- "you better make me look good, mija." He's excited, and so am I. He says I'm gonna live to be 100, and that he's gonna leave me his Social Security check. I don't want the first, and I can't get the second. Here we are on his birthday last month. It was his second pinata, ever, and he made a speech thanking all the residents for coming to his party.

First Children's video on the life of Willie Velasquez/The boy made of lightning

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sat, 3 Dec 2011 23:37:00 -0600

Willie Velasquez was a voting rights pioneer, and is one of three Latinos to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

When I tell this story to children, they cry and cheer -- and want to vote.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/willievelasquez/the-boy-made-of-lightning

For more information:
http://www.wix.com/anabarbararenaud/willie

I was sexually harrassed and millions more

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 3 Nov 2011 21:18:00 -0500

When I was in my twenties, I was fresh out of a graduate program, newly married and totally stupid about professional men in the office. Daddy just didn't prepare me enough, as I suspect happened to Anita Hill. Sad but so true.

It was the late seventies, and my boss, who headed a non-profit organization in Austin, Texas, said so many things I don't know where to begin. Here is a sampling:

1. "I'm gonna sleep with every woman in this organization." (I guess this included me).
2. "Did you have good sex over the weekend with your husband?"
3.   "Can you get her for me?" (On a return trip from Washington D.C. to Dallas)
4. "We call you Miss Prim and Proper." Because I had told the young women in the office about
the sexual harrassment legislation, how they didn't have to sleep with him or any other "boss."
5. "Your problem is that you aren't nice to the boardmembers." (Mostly men and mostly lechers)
And here is when I should have sued immediately:
6. "I don't want blood in this office." My boss's sexualized culture was such that one of his underlings had posted a newspaper cartoon of the increasingly bikini-clad Texas A&M cheerleaders -- with their behinds totally Barshamian-naked -- this creative guy had written my name on one pair, and two other female colleagues, each got her own nalga. Because I had the support of one of my colleagues -- the third woman, a secretary who was enthralled by him would not, could not, pobrecita, though she was silenced by the incident.   Since there were two women complaining -- my boss took the photograph down, refused to give it to me -- he was a graduate of Princeton, after all, and that's when he stated that "he didn't want blood." Of course he was as glib and funny and charming as Herman Cain. In his early thirties at the time, married, with two daughters.

I wish I had sued him. I'm this close to giving you his name. Hell with it, his name was Pedro Ruiz Garza, and he owes me an apology. I never slept with any man in my office, nor did I encourage them in any way. I think the real story about sexual harrassment is how millions of women can't tell their story cause they're afraid of losing their job, or what does it mean? Am I a puta? Did I ask for it?   My story isn't new, it's the oldest story of all. And it happens to millions of women, especially in their twenties and thirties. It's happening right now.

There are lots of Herman Cains out there -- and many times their wives are the last to know. This is a story of men because they have privilege -- and I suspect that brown and black men are more easily snared in the dragnet of race. Of course men are gonna fight back, who wants to lose this kind of power, this sexy thrilling fantasy that men have made for themselves -- because we women let them.

I'm sure that Pedro has raised his daughters to fight back, but he owes me and every other woman he worked with an apology for his abhorrent language and falta de respeto. I"m sure he's taught his daughters not to put up with men like him.

But it's my fault too, because I should have sued the bastard.

Telling the stories of Tejas

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Tue, 1 Nov 2011 17:39:00 -0500

www.wix.com/anabarbararenaud/willie

Children deserve to know their stories, especially the stories of struggle,
faith, love, and sacrifice. It's time that writers tell great stories, and may this be just the
beginning.

Found and Lost and Found again: Fluffie arrives in the barrio two weeks later

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 8 Sep 2011 13:24:00 -0500

A miracle happened.

Fluffie, the maltese-poodle mix, escaped the Dog Pound some weeks ago: He was my dog, cause after the Dog Pound picked him up -- looking like a rastafarian with very bad hair, it cost me $50 to save him from death row at the Pound. Why do you want this dog, lady? Fluffie isn't tame you see. He's Street. Not a bad type, just keeps a safe distance from people. At the pound, on Death Row, I explained my whole year of trying to catch this cabron. So, they felt sorry for the little hellion, and he got registered, neutered, shots, micro-chipped, and shaved down to his nakedness.

I guess Lady Destiny had something to show me, cause when I went to get him the next day, he slipped under his collar and ran for the hills as he was getting into the back of my car, thanks to the help of a Dog Pound staffer who thought I was abusing Fluffie who was doing some twisty-tango moves. It wasn't all my fault, I asked the Dog Pound Clinic to make that collar tight, the assistant swore he'd never get out. I've seen this dog on the street for a year, I told her. Tried dog traps, barely legal drugs, and weinies. He takes the weinies, eats the drugs, ignores the traps. This dog came from a family that ran with the mustangs. He's the boss of the barrio, trust me.

The dog will not be able to get out of this collar, she repeated. Five minutes, later, he was running across the lot toward the Food Bank, at the corner of 90 and 151, on the far westside of town.

The dispatchers came out, the big guys with the bigger hooks, who all ran toward the lot after a dog that weighed maybe 15 pounds and bare-assed. I didn't even try, had to go to work, and cried myself that night with guilt, anger at ACS, Fluffie, and my checkbook.

The next day I got on the phone and called everyone I could at the Dog Pound and blamed them. Got a personal call from the Director, the Protector and Killer of Dogs, depending on how you look at it, and he assured me that the Dog Pound had two dispatchers looking, a trap set up outside the Dog Pound, that Fluffie would be back, they always do. Don't worry, ma'm, we're gonna catch this dog.

Yesterday I got a call from Michael, from Fluffie's barrio, Ruiz and San Jacinto, way across town from the Dog Pound. "Hey, I barely recognize him, you really shaved him, didn'tcha? Sure good to get him back."

Fluffie travelled about fifteen miles through traffic, scorching heat, and big dogs that could mistake him for a live weinie. Gave him some smoked ones today, and said hello. He's happy, and I have to figure out what to do now. Here's the before and after pics:

Fluffie says, Come Get me Now, Fools.

How I found and lost Fluffie in San Antonio

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:33:00 -0500

This is Fluffie, a dog from the Westside that I've been trying to catch for a year. He's a mustang-poodle. I've tried dog traps from the Animal Defense League, dozens of weinies, and almost illegal drugs. Nothing worked. He's a sweet dog, but afraid of people. Two days ago he finally got trapped in a yard on Colorado Street, and Mike, a man who was my lookout called me and I went right over the next morning. He was already on Death Row, curled up in a corner. I paid to get him fixed, his shots, microchipped, the works. I went yesterday to get him, ready with weinies, a training leash, a collar and leash. He's a Maltese Poodle, apparently, but who knew? Weighs about 15 pounds, so the dreadlocks weighed more than him. I told the woman in the Clinic to please make the collar tight so that he wouldn't get away, told her he was a wild one. She told me that no way could he get away from the collar, though it wasn't as snug as I would have liked, but these are the people who work with dogs, and maybe they know something? I walked out slowly with the Fluffie and he dragged, then walked some, let me pet him a little, let me carry him a little before he made signs he wanted to bite me, got back on the ground, then dragged and started wrestling with the leash. A guy came out to help me, and we walked to the car where I opened the back, and by this time because Fluffie was wiggling like the little maniac he is, slipped out of the collar that was supposed to be "tight" and got away. Went under the van, and the guy called for help from ACS but no one came. Then Fluffie was about to take off to the freeway, but the guy did some kind of football defense-move, and cut him off. Fluffie ran off to the dried grass between the ACS and the Food Bank. Finally the ACS truck came and they told me they would find him for sure and call me. Of course they haven't. The really sad thing in all this is that they are blaming me. They get paid to save dogs, and some of us just do it because who could resist el Fluffie? If they only knew how hard I tried. Now he's buck-naked and furless out there, I hope someone can trap him and save him. He's a good little dog, with some weinies and patience, he can make it. He's two years old according to my ACS papers. They say he could've been abused in the past, and that's why he's so skittish around people.

Governor Perry wants Latina girls in Texas to not have sex

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:31:00 -0500

Ay, let's come together and behold the cemented and unforgiving mind of our Governor in Texas. There are pregnant teenage girls everywhere, sometimes you see girls with a baby and pregnant again. Sometimes you see them on the bus with three children. These are girls who look like they're 14, 15, 16 years old.
Can't get birth control in Texas, thanks to our Governor who wants to be President, and says our abstinence policies work -- well, they worked for him.

The only reason I didn't have sex in high school was because I was afraid of Daddy's wrath -- but even that doesn't stop the young from the conspiracy of nature and hip-hop.

The Bad Dream-State of Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 7 Jul 2011 19:10:00 -0500

I'm a Chicana, a Mexican-American, an American citizen born in this embarrassing land called Texas who is rendered almost speechless by the continued impoverished, dream-toppling politics of the chosen tribe they call conservatives in this state. Are these people on drugs? Only legal ones, probly. But they're living in the dreams of the past, the myths, the legends, the belief they would always have Texas as theirs, when, surprise! It belongs to all of us.

I have not been able to write about it cause the continued legislative hate is worser than a tsunami, a Joplin-category tornado, a Gulf Coast oil spill, it's been a series of Katrinaesque pendejadas coming out of that big-hair empty-headed Governor Perry and his ilk that make me....wanna cuss and spit.

So I will. Like who could possibly vote for a man who is proud of giving us a state when we could be the next silicon valley, but instead we're building more pulgas and jails? Of course corporations like to come here, we don't like unions and if you want to spew your basura, go for it. And get a gun while you're at it, and take it to college too. We've now returned to the past behind John Wayne, and it won't be over until somebody shoots at this movie. Bam-bam.

Is that progress or what?

This tribe of fear and John Wayne wannabes have beaten me up. Yes, I am bruised, battered, poor for daring to write in a state that dares to deny children the love of reading, denies the best immigrant-born children the right to go to college and treats them like criminals, and if they could, they'd deport me too. But I'm not out yet.

Confession: My birth certificate was misspelled in the fifties when I was born -- they don't know how to write French names in this state -- and if my late mother hadn't sworn on a stack of Bibles in Austin that yes, she remembered my birth and the midwife, as I was getting my passport, who knows, who friggin knows what the next legislature will do.

Where to start talking about Texas? How to stop? We're at the bottom of everything, you name it. Pollution. Education. Millions in prisons and we spend zillions for that. Obese, a nice word for gorditos. We have the biggest guts and that's because we won't tolerate mass transit so we can walk. Hell no! This is Texas, and real men have trucks. If it wasn't for all the Mexican immigration, legal and otherwise, I don't know who'd work on our tires, roofs, restaurants and clean our hotels, but let's pretend the brown ones aren't over 40% of the state population and that your children and grandchildren will be brown too. Dream on...And what kind of state will we become then? Ask Steve Murdock, the demographer whose work I admire and if the legislature can't read, then why bother? We don't have a state insurance tax now, depending on property taxes, and live in the dark ages with our regressive sales taxes. I probably pay more taxes than the Governor, cause he gets loopholes.

I could go on, but I won't. I do know our oppressive laws may blunt the inevitable changes, but change is comin'. Like it or not, baby. I got my degree outside this state no thanks to Texas, and
there's just enough of us who can write and think and have also read the Bible and agree on the profound story of it, unlike our Governor, who has turned it into a prop and carries it with his coyote-killing gun. Or maybe the money he's made stealing this land for himself and his cronies gets him real good hairspray. Or maybe he's got just enough Mexican or Black in that hair, and this is what happens when you forget how we are all descended from the same tribe.

Transforming the Alamo, Making Historia

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:18:00 -0500

Yes, Blame the Arizona shooting on Sarah Palin

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sat, 8 Jan 2011 16:32:00 -0600

It is the inchoate fear of the increasingly virulent language and actions of the right-wing that led to this "senseless" shooting in Arizona today of the Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the killing of half-a-dozen people, including an aide and Judge Roll, along with injuring more than a dozen others.

After listening to Limbaugh, Palin, and their arch-conservative cohorts, it has been clear to me they have encouraged hate, fear, and violence in their attacks against the President, with lies, distortions, a total ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, all with a crucifix around her neck.

I want our Democratic leaders and our President to call this for what it is: Fear of how the world is changing, and how it must change, how it was destined to change. In the next days, you will hear about the "senseless" killer(s). Not true. Everything is connected -- and the fearmongerers in this country who are making millions for their lies and hypocrisy need to be challenged by our leadership who understand that we must be tolerant, peacemaking, inclusive.

But of course, many of them won't -- they want to appeal to the "mainstream" who is also afraid of the changing demographics in this country, the economic and cultural impact of globalization, climate change, the aging economics of this country -- but please, they don't want things to change right now.

So it will be up to us to call our representatives and demand that they take a stand on this shooting that is not senseless at all.

Better yet, I hope that women around the country take these guns away from the boys and the girls who think that being a boy is somehow special, once and for all.

Power doesn't come from a loaded gun, Ms. Palin. It comes from a woman who recognizes that we are here to heal the world. A woman who stands up for Peace, Love, Forgiveness, Healing. That kind of woman is truly fearless, it is not weak at all. And that kind of woman is inside each and every one of us if we're not afraid to listen.

The revolution has begun: Dream Act Fails in Senate/Immigrant Students Eyes Now Open

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 09:00:00 -0600

Back in the late eighties, when most of the Dream Act Activists weren't yet born, and their parents were on the way to the baile to meet each other, the middle and upper-class in Dallas was sloshy with Christmas money. I saw the Dreamer's parents everywhere: landscapers; roofers; the coolest restaurants; carwashes; nannies in the park; janitors; and if you were up and around in the early morning, you could see packed cars leaving the warehouses, a working-class flood of brown people -- all over Dallas where they'd just completed a late-night shift in some kind of assembly work.

I'm glad, painful as it is for me to say this -- that the Dream Act failed. Now these beautiful, idealistic, dreamers, are awake to the powerful interests in this country. Now they will see beyond the hip-hop, Shakiraness of brown commercials to their destiny. And what is that? To lead this country, to educate our community, and to teach all of us to vote as never before. To be different. To do better than what my civil rights generation has done for you.

Now they surely see how my mostly white generation and their followers is a tribe of fear -- of these Dreamers and how they will deny them --- as they tried to deny the Blacks in my youth, Cesar Chavez, Vietnam, La Raza, anyone who wanted justice, equality, dignity not defined by the status quo. Now they see how we have got to do more than show what good, loyal, Americans we are.

Bullshit. Patriotic Americans do not start wars that are nightmares, good Americans do not invade other countries, loyalty is a blood-soaked word if it means that we will send the children of the working-class to wars so that we can save our oil and prestige, rewarding the parents with front-page stories of mijitos, medals, and big checks. So that we can be proud of killing other people and getting killed themselves. That's not my kind of loyalty.

I want the Dreamers to be the leaders that our President won't be -- and that your parents didn't want, because their dream is for you to have a nice home, new car, and to live in the suburbs. That is exactly what my immigrant mother wanted for me, and how I disappointed her. But I have not disappointed myself. In other words, once your "dream" is realized, our parents want us to forget the past. Live for yourself and your family only. And in time, as happened too often in my generation, the powerful might just might invite you to join them. How proud your parents will be. And then you will compromise all that has happened, because you want to belong.

This is the price of the American dream. But you are getting a bigger gift for Christmas.

I am telling you not to belong to anyone or anything except your soul that is not starving, but the richest ocean of all, the deepest gold mine, the bluest sky, and the greenest land of all. You are the dream of this country. You are the American dream. The American dream is not about money, or cars, or fame. It is about justice. In your group, and the next 65,000 high school undocumented graduating this spring, is a better Jefferson. A working-class Bolivar. A Nobel-prize winner. I know this, I feel it in my bones.

Those Senators who voted against you are afraid of you, your parents, and your potential to change this country. Of course it was supposed to change. It was supposed to change the moment our collective ancestor, el Cristobal Colon, arrived and showed how savage we can be with each other.

So change the world. Change everything. Walk in truth and tell your hard-working parents and neighbors that you are exactly what this country has been waiting for. Change this picture.

This is your destiny.

photo: Former San Antonio city councilwoman Maria Antonietta Berriozabal getting
arrested at Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's office in San Antonio. She and esteemed
professor Antonia Castaneda were arrested along with almost a dozen student-dreamers that night.
mysanantonio.com

They are starving and getting arrested to go to college/Dream Act in San Antonio, Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:20:00 -0600

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKj5njkUhdg&feature=player_embeddedLast night at the offices of our Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, over a dozen starving college students (20 days now without eating), were arrested, along with former City Councilwoman and spiritual leader Maria Antonietta Berriozabal, and labor scholar and activist Dr. Antonia Castaneda.

I am frankly dismayed at the lack of courage from our political leadership -- where are they? Should I name names? (Congressmen Ciro Rodriguez and Charlie Gonzalez, Mayor Julian Castro).

But the political leaders want to win elections (though Congressman Rodriguez lost his due to his pandering for independents instead of hell-with-the-consequences truth-telling). So they wait, and they mollify, and they hope the tide will change. It's gonna get alot worse before it gets better, and no thanks to the ambitions of those who live for what they think matters, instead of getting on the train to destiny.

We need leaders. And so here they are. No fancy titles, status, or campaigns. Just women speaking truth to power.

I am proud to know both Maria Antonietta Berriozabal and Antonia Castaneda. I am proud of these students who are so desperate to get a degree and make this world a better place. I am proud they want to learn so much it hurts just to look at them. And so they will change the world, this I know.

The world is changing, and if the conservative forces out there don't want to see it, then we must talk to them and sometimes starve if that's what it takes to show them that we belong here, as much as their forefathers and mother wanted to come here, to these lands so long ago. These young people are the best we have, and to deny them is to deny our greatest beauty, and the truth that we were meant to be here here together.

Dog Whisperer of San Antonio/Andres Valdez

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 14:35:00 -0600

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKPwedfalXc

He's from San Antonio's southside, and he's the
real thing. I've watched him handle three big dogs at once, and at his camp, he's got 16 dogs, many who were abandoned. On this day, he made a friend of "Donkey," who's been chained up all his three years. Donkey mauled my dog months ago, but now he's my buddy,
thanks to Andres, who helped me learn to
understand what dogs want.

With 100,000 stray dogs in San Antonio, it's good to know that Andres can help people with their pets, and also find a way to reach people who have forgotten what it is to love a dog on the streets.

To reach him, email him at fourkninekamp@yahoo.com

La Perra died and it's my fault

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Sun, 7 Nov 2010 10:53:00 -0600

I found her this morning. La Perra was lying besides one of the creek's pillars under San Jacinto. I don't
think she had been dead too long because her body was not very cold.
The men at the Picnic tienda where I fed her last Sunday across the street tell me that she's been going down for a month. I know that she starved to death, and that is the worst death of all.
Last Sunday I wanted to take her to the dog shelter here in San Anto, but they're closed on Sunday. I have two dogs in my tiny yard, and I was afraid to keep her with me. On Monday I had to deal with my 91 year-old father's pre-funeral wishes in Raymondville, four hours away, and I was afraid to delay his wishes. La Perra ate a little barbacoa on Sunday morning and I left food with the men, who promised to feed her. I looked for her on Monday night, Tuesday, Wednesday, all week. She must have been alive, just waiting to die. I should have pressed Juanillo the homeless man when he told me that La Perra slept with him to help me find her right now. I should have taken her to the Animal Defense League last Sunday, which is way north on Nacogdoches here, except they are very hard to reach, and the last time I needed their help with the dog I have at home now, they refused.
Still, this is my fault. I didn't think my girlfriends would help me. They just tease me and don't really want to know.
La Perra died because I was afraid of my landlord, of rejection from the ADL, giving up on my friends who don't want to see that a starving dog is the most vulnerable creature in a world of social injustice.
I"m so sorry, La Perra. I should have, I should have loved you more. Please forgive me.

She wants to die, the homeless man told me

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez) — Thu, 4 Nov 2010 21:46:00 -0500

I've been looking for La Perra since Tuesday. The men who hang out at the Picnic on San Jacinto and Martin told me she had died. That the owner had poisoned her. That she was lying in the creek that runs under the Picnic where I first saw her.
Today, a small miracle.
At dark, I drove by again, and stopped. I stepped out a bag of dogfood in my hand. A homeless man came up to me, said "don't you remember me?"
He's one of the men who sleeps under the street, at the creek where La Perra walks. Told me that she'd slept with him last night, that he tried to feed her but she refused to eat.
The owner bred her for puppies and then dumped her, he said, that he is a cruel man. The homeless man's name is Juanillo, and he sleeps on a mattress with some blankets, and yes, I remember him now.
I gave him some food for La Perra, a leash, and my cell number. And some money for him, too, he said that he works as a custodian for the store.
He says that La Perra wants to die.