FRIDA

FRIDA

freedom

from farces

straight talkin'

bleeding heart

lived in a war

but opened doors

for other women

images of your reality

a surreal shadow

dreams of children

while raising a man

standing for principles of

libertad without a trace

of it ever coming home

where did you go

your heart an open trench

wrenched in the pain of loss

a cross to bear and wear 

in fists closed 

around a paintbrush

you fragrant flower of Mexico

too overpowering for some

for others not strong enough

to leave the frog in his big pond

your kiss made him a crown prince

Copyright © 2007 Odilia Galván Rodríguez.  All Rights Reserved.

SUPPORT ELVIRA ARELLANO!!!

AFP Photo


A CALL TO SUPPORT THE CASE OF ELVIRA ARELLANO
Stand in solidarity with all immigrants, documented and undocumented

The IAC urges you to support the case of Elvira Arellano. Elvira is an undocumented worker who is taking a heroic stand against deportations and fighting for her rights. She is a native of Michoacán, Mexico who came to the U.S. like many of the other 12 million undocumented in this country, in search of work and a better life.

In 2002, Elvira was detained by Homeland Security agents in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweep at O’Hare Airport in Chicago under the guise of allegedly looking for “terrorists”. She was detained by the Department of Homeland Security for using a false social security number on her job at O’Hare.

On August 18, 2006 Elvira Arellano and her seven year old son, Saul who is a US citizen, took sanctuary in Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago instead of reporting for deportation, primarily because Saul has health problems. She has pledged to live indefinitely in the church until granted a reprieve.

Elvira is a well known activist, representing many families in Congressional hearings and speaking on behalf of immigrant rights. She worked to organize in July 2005 a march of 50,000 for immigrant rights in Chicago, and went on a hunger strike to support workers who were picked up by ICE prior to the historic May 1st boycott in 2006. Arellano was a founder of both La Familia Latina Unida and the Coalition of African Arab Asian European and Latino Immigrants of Illinois (CAAAELII).

The case of Elvira Arellano is a just case

Elvira Arellano has become the symbol of resistance to the heartless and callous deportations that are sweeping the country. Despite a legislative standstill in Congress, not only are deportations escalating, local officials around the nation are implementing de facto immigration policy that amount to a witch-hunt against immigrants. A case in point is the anti-immigrant ordinance that passed in July in Hazelton, PA.

Due to her heroic stand, a group of Black ministers spoke last week at Adalberto Methodist of the comparisons of Arellano to Rosa Parks. Reverend Albert Tyson said he hopes “their support would increase the bonds between Latinos and African-Americans.” At the meeting Arellano said, “I don’t only speak for me and my son, but for millions of families like mine.” Supporters from the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood chanted, “Luchando mano y mano, Boriqua y Mexicano!” (“Fighting hand in hand, Puerto Rican and Mexican!”)

Elvira Arellano is the perfect example that the anti-immigrant hysteria sweeping the country is an inhumane situation that has become intolerable. The human rights of immigrants are being cruelly violated under the guise of fighting terrorism or stopping “illegal” immigration. In fact, no human being is illegal and whether in the U.S. documented or undocumented, immigrants have a right to live in peace, without fear of evictions from their homes or the country.

How you can help Elvira:

1. Write letters to Illinois Senators Richard Durbin and Barack Obama as well as your own legislator urging them to prevent her deportation.

For Senator Durbin visit: http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm#contact
For Senator Obama: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/index.php

2. Send Letters to the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune asking them to stop demonizing Elvira as well as all immigrants. Their emails are letters@suntimes.com and ctc-tribletter@tribune.com.

3. Send letters of support directly to Elvira at the organization she works with and who has been spearheading her support, Sin Fronteras at Centro Sin Fronteras 2300 S. Blue Island Ave., Chicago IL 60608 or visit the website: www.legalizationyes.com. For Spanish speakers visit:
www.legalizacionsi.com

WE WANT PEACE, WAR NO MORE

PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

I can not get it through my head why we as a nation would prefer war to peace.

Can anyone explain this to me in any real way so that I can wrap my head around it and agree.

I do not think any mother in this country wants her child dead, can't want her child killing other peoples children either.

This is a call for all mothers of the United States of America, for all the mothers of the world to stand up and say, "Basta Ya! Peace in the Middle East, Peace in the World!"

Ase, Ase, Ase O!

HUNAB KU

gateway

door

portal

more

galaxies

exist

beyond

moon

y olorun

hunab ku

la puerta

siempre

abierta es

incierta solo

por nuestra

ignorancia

insaciable y

materialista

sky serpents

fly freely while

deluges spew

from their mouths

washing away

doubts and

worlds

end in

frozen rain

not fire

© Odilia Galvan Rodriguez, 2006

Cross At Your Own Risk

there are many
iron curtains
being built every day to
keep out scapegoats
wannabe workers or
people whose ancestor's
hearts are buried in
the [red] brown earth
on the other side
walls displace souls
undocumented in a
new apartheid world
[white] only right but
a [blues] beat blasts 
and might those lines be drawn
as militarized zones 
while zombies do the bidding
of same masters and their
banners of irrelevance
some cold wars are deadlier and
cowards hide behind
masks of all kinds

Copyright © 2006 Odilia Galván Rodríguez.  All Rights Reserved.

 

Margarita's Letter to George Bush

Twelve year old Margarita Rodriguez has a campaign to collect one-million signatures on a letter to George W. Bush, because she's heard that thousands of immigrants could be arrested, charged with felonies and deported along with their children, who incidentally were born here, if they are caught living undocumented here in the US. I think this is a noble effort by one so young and deserves all of our attention. It makes me sick to think that children have to be worried about being rounded up, humiliated and treated lord knows how -- all because their parents chose to come here looking for a better life.

Then there is the whole issue about why come here looking for a better life? What is so bad about Mexico, Central and South America or other immigrant's countries of origin, that makes people risk their lives to come here under very scary conditions? Most of the time people trying to reach our land paved with gold have to deal with some very unscrupulous or unsavory characters like the so-called coyotes (people who illegally smuggle folks across borders for a living) who have not only been known to take peoples money and then leave them stranded in the desert, or in some abandoned truck with no water, food or ventilation, or even worse, have outright murdered them. This business is a sad state of affairs with all kinds of crooks involved and so it makes one wonder why anyone would take such risks. However, if you visit these countries you start to get a sense of what is really going on. Globalization has not only brought more poverty and suffering there but also the propaganda about supposedly just how great it is to live in the US of A, shown via cable TV, has reached almost every corner of this globe. One can experience the promise of bling bling right in their own homes!

Laws like NAFTA (the North American Fair Trade Agreement) which was touted as the answer, to bring jobs and other opportunities to Mexico, has done nothing of the sort, rather it has only made the rich richer and the poor, well you know. The gutting of resources of "third world" countries by the super powers has gone on for too long and it is going to take leaders like Chavez, Morales, Bachelet and Da Silva to start to make a difference in their own countries. This will not be easy at all as there has been over 500 years of pillaging and plunder. Hopefully we will also be seeing a regime change in Mexico, the presidential elections are coming up in July, which will start to make a difference there. In the meantime we need some immigration laws that work. Making families felons or putting up bigger and uglier fences is not the answer at all.

If you want to help little Margarita Rodriguez get her message across to Bush please go to the page given above, click on the title of this post, and sign it. While I think much more has to be done, it's great that this child decided to take action to protect herself and her family and/or friends and community and it is important to support young people who are trying to make a difference in our world. It is also important to support the people who were brought here on false pretenses and promises because their was little or no hope of a job in their own countries due in large part to our economic systems that feed off of theirs!

Back in the Bay

I'ts been awhile, I've missed being in the Bay Area, the only place I would live in the US these days...

It's been cold, the days awaken with frost on the roof tops. I don't remember when I've seen this here -- if ever and I've been living here off and on since the early '80's but then again back then I was too busy to notice much...the pressure of an 8 hr. + job, a young baby to raise myself etc.

There's been so much going on and it seems all anyone can focus on is Vice President Cheney shooting his hunting buddy. The poor man seemed embarrassed to have gotten hurt, and for all the fuss over his having been almost killed, after all the man had a heart attack. Strange.

When the news media is so totally taken by something like this, those people who are into conspiracy theories always ask, "What is it they don't want us to be focusing on?" And there is so much that they could be talking about instead. Like the UN asking for the closure of the base at Guantanamo (Gitmo), and the claims by US officials that it's basically a summer camp for terrorists -- nothing going on there, no torture etc. Or how about another natural disaster - this time in the Philippines, or the war in Iraq, possible war in Iran, the new government in Palestine, the fact that they want to continue spying on US citizens but can't figure out who are good or bad terrorists -- aren't they all bad? But I will leave these topics for now.

I am having a crisis of faith and want to focus my energy on that, seeing as how I am at a crossroads...or maybe at a bridge...more on that another day.

regards to all.

Purple My Heart

purple my heart
at nine years old
watching the man I love more
than anyone in the world
sitting in the blue-red light
coming through
the picture window
holding in his strong hands
the case
that held
all he had to show
for all those hundreds
he’d taken
that brought him countless
sleepless nights
or in and out
of the other side
night sweats
the wake up
screaming
nightmares
with violet faces
of his ghost sickness

purple the heart
my father won in Korea
trophy case shattered and split
dried seeds of blood
on still clenched fist
all his medals torn apart
ripped and wrinkled ribbons
resting on splintered glass
meaningless medalions
tossed aside in disgust
repeating over and over
I did this for what?

purple the oath
loyalty my father pledged
his life
to defend his country
from the Reds
but after all was said
the faces who looked up
from the charred field of death
his big guns had buried them in
mirrored back faces of kin
who claimed him more
than the racist white-man did
when he returned from Korea

purple the smoke of
burning cedar and sage
of lavender oil rubbed
deep into head, chest
hands and feet
elders predicted
there was not enough
their medicine could do
no amount of ceremony
could wash away
that much blood
the sickness would have to fade
like the signs
of fire, flood or earthquake
with the years
he’d have to pray
away the madness
await his destiny

purple the sorrow cloth
lining his coffin
covering the mirrors
after his death
rain through
street lamp glow
the sunset
ripple clouds
passionate
amaranthine, amethyst
heliotrope, lavender
lilacs, lupines, irises, crocuses
dried flowers on a heroes grave

purple the night light
through my window
candles in the dark


© Odilia Galván Rodríguez

Dedicated to Warriors and Saints ~ Maferefun Orunmila on his Day October 4

Los Otros

four Cuban medicine men
in a '57 Chevy
smoking up Calle 23
dressed crisp and
spotless in their whites
from Kangol caps to leather shoes



they are knights shining through the
centuries like the Templars or Masons
men with their society intact
secrets sharp as their blue steel edged knives
used in killing to perfection for the sake of mankind
those winged and the four legged creatures
who give their lives so that we might live

in a city teeming with ghosts
host to all sorts of unknowing
folks who come for the rum without the coke, rumba and
places they believe are filled with only the finest tobacco
smoke but are actually haunted rooms where the living and dead coexist
sometimes tryst on the same plane especially before a rainstorm
when Oya's horse's tail whips up the wind and

corpse dust comes flying freely out the gates of Colon cemetery
through Havana streets covering heads of the unsuspecting
with a possible unwanted phantom for company then believe they got
sick from the ice cubes in some club since they wouldn't even think
to drink the water

Baba lou aye had worn torn legs like C's dad
thick tree branches gnarled and scarred
not by disease but by bullets and shrapnel
marks of countless battles fought and won
laughing in deaths' face since before
he could rightly be called a man and
I couldn't keep my eyes off them
as he laid there struggling for one more
of life's breaths
so he could smoke his last one in bed
at the Oakland Veteran's hospital
those last days were the worst
before his warrior-self finally lost
that last offensive
being something beyond his control


©Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Migratory Birds: New and Noted Poems, 2002

photo from http://yoruba.at/deutsch/attribute.htm

From The Heart

This is a picture of hurricane Katrina, I don't know who took it but it is awesome. If you did take this picture please let me know so that I can give you credit, you deserve it!

I have been whirling around southern Califas for the past week since Angel left for Havana. Hawk and I dropped him off at the TJ airport last Friday night. I don't know what he found when he arrived, it's been months since he's been home. I imagine everything will be as it should be -- the dogs, Casey, Yon, and Johnny were fine last we heard and the apartment as well.


What I miss most is hearing Angel's voice, his voice steadies me. His morning prayers at 7:30 am before he leaves for English and computer classes every weekday nudge me from sleep. I hear him even now some mornings but this is in my dreams and not him there standing firmly in the shrine praying.

He says that in order for the Creator to hear us we must pray out loud, from the heart. Prayers must not be rushed or said just to say them. Praying for others must be even more heartfelt. De Akokan - From the Heart.

I think of all the prayers I learned in Catholic school as a child, I remember saying them at mass and during penance after confession. I remember learning how to say the Rosary, though I don't remember it now. But what I do remember is that prayers always were said low in whispers like a low humming or buzzing.

Today one of Angel's godchildren called to say her daughter is in trouble and she wants counsel on how to deal with her. She is a rebellious 20 something year old who is at risk of failing out in her last semester at the University. I tell her that he is not reachable now, the phone is still not connected in the apartment and that while I have sent him e-mail apparently he's been unable to check in. I ask her what I can do she asks that I pray for her and her child and asks me when I think she should talk to her, she is so angry, she tells me. I say not to worry that I will pray for them and that I'll get back to her with more advice as soon as possible.

I pray. I stand at the shrine and pray whispering at first then louder in a clear voice, I pray from my heart. I pray for this mother having a difficult time relating to her angry daughter, asking for help. I think of when I was an angry daughter and wonder if my mother ever asked for prayers, or help with me.

I think of all the prayers we have all said lately for all the people dying in Iraq, for all the people who passed away or survived Katrina and now Rita. I think of all the prayers we say daily and wonder how many we say from the heart instead of from the head. I wonder how many of us know the difference.

I got a wonderful chance to spend time with my nephew from Chicago at my nieces home who lives in LA, on my way back up to the Bay Area. It was a memorable time, from baking with my two youngest nieces to talking music, art, life and politics with their parents and others of the 20 something-year-old people in my famila. As always, they give me hope and lots of love.

I look at this picture of Katrina and think of what someone said today on the radio - that if Katrina had a last name it would be Bush. I think if the aftermath of Katrina had a last name it would be dubbed Bush.

I still call on everyone who happens to read this to continue to pray for the survivors of Katrina and Rita, and if you can do something to help even if you already have, please do so.

I also call on everyone to pray from the heart for an end to war.

War is not healthy for people or other living things...Ase O!

© 2005