[ Update: There will be a peaceful demonstration in front of Self Help Graphics on Wednesday, June 22nd at Noon, in order to protest the cultural center being shut down and locked up by its Board of Directors. A message board has also been set up where people can discuss ways to resolve the crisis. ]

Self Help Graphics, East Los Angeles’ venerable institution dedicated to Chicano art, printmaking and grassroots community arts in general, was closed on June 7th, 2005. The artistic heart of Chicano LA beats no more. Amazingly enough, it was the organization’s own “Board of Directors” that closed the doors of SHG to the public, changed the locks on the building to bar staff and artists from entering, and locked-up the parking lot used by visitors and community members alike.

While I was aware that there were problems brewing at SHG, its closure comes as a complete shock to me, and to many other artists, activists, and community members. I have exhibited my artworks at SHG, and I have prints and other artworks in its Tienda Colores giftshop. But it’s not being deprived of a venue at which to exhibit that I find so upsetting, more importantly - the Chicano community in particular and Los Angeles in general, has lost one of its premiere arts institutions. Founded in the late 1960’s by Sister Karen Baccalero, Self Help Graphics quickly established itself as the center of artistic production for the people of East L.A., and has remained one of the most important community arts centers in the nation. Its Galeria Otra Vez has been a showcase for local and national artists, playing an essential role in bringing Chicano/Latino art into the mainstream. As a non-profit organization SHG offered several important youth art programs and writing workshops. They maintained a print making atelier and collection of hand made prints that rival any collection of Chicano art in the country, and their annual print exhibit and auction was always a huge community event. One of the most popular festivals in East Los Angeles was held at SHG, the annual Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead celebration. Based on the ancient Aztec revelry that honored the dead, the community event took place every November 2nd, with a procession of costumed participants that culminated in an art exhibit and craft fair replete with traditional music, entertainment and food. To say that Self Help Graphics helped to launch an artistic renaissance is an understatement.

While trouble was brewing just beneath the surface, it became apparent to all when Self Help’s executive director, Tomas Benitez, submitted his resignation on December 2004. His resignation was formally accepted by the “Board of Directors” on June 7th, who then made the unprecedented move of completely shutting down the institution. The mission of any board of directors is to protect, promote, nurture, and expand the body it presides over… not to kill it. No matter what difficulties they face, a proper Board of Directors will do everything within its power to preserve what has been entrusted to them. Which begs the question… just who are the people sitting on the Board of Directors for Self Help and what exactly have they done for the institution? If financial woes were the core problem faced by the board, why did they not make a direct appeal to the people, artists, foundations, and various supporters for help? If the Board of Directors had an understanding of the actual historic significance of Self Help Graphics, if they grasped the importance of such a cultural center, if they had any respect or empathy for the arts or for artists… in short, if they had any integrity, they would have done everything in their own power to keep Self Help Graphics afloat, up to and including using their own financial resources. Instead, they chose to strangle the life out of this most revered establishment.

Now is the time for action, an occasion for all who have ever benefited from the good works of Self Help Graphics to rise in its defense. It is the artists and people of Los Angeles who built SHG, we are the ones who kept it alive and vibrant, and we are the ones who will defend and resurrect it. The Board of Directors may have chained the gates and locked the doors, but the demise of Self Help Graphics will only come about when it is abandoned by the people and the artists. It is a crime to wrap a community arts center in chains, and the way forward is to sweep away the Board of Directors as it is presently constituted. The struggle for cultural democracy is “on” in Los Angeles, and all are invited to become active, as it’s said - “use it or lose it”. Having taken the unwarranted and extreme measure of closing Self Help Graphics, the Board of Directors now wants a community meeting to “discuss the state of the organization”, which seems an odd thing given that they’ve obviously made up their minds as to the direction of the institution. We should all take this opportunity to demand the immediate reopening of Self Help Graphics as well as the removal of its abysmal Board of Directors. The meeting will take place at Ave 50 Studio in Highland Park, Tuesday, June 28th, at 7:00 pm. (location: 131 N. Avenue 50 (Figueroa).

[ This article was written by artist, Mark Vallen, and originally posted on his Art For A Change web log ]

Xispas cartoonista, Sergio Hernandez, takes another jab at the so-called “Minutemen”. The gabacho guardians of all things godly and ‘merican recently assaulted anti-racist protestors by running them down with a car at a protest in Garden Grove, Califas. After posting this cartoon, Sergio left for Austin Texas, where he will be creating new fine art prints by participating in the Serie Print Making Project at Coronado Studios. You can see more of Sergio’s artworks at: www.chicanarteyque.com

Sandra de la Loza is a Chicana artist, activist, and educator who lives and works in Los Angeles. A co-founder of the Arts and Action center, she’s an interdisciplinary artist who uses photography, installation and digital media to explore the social realities of LA. One of Sandra’s projects has been the Pocho Research Society (PRS), in her words “…a collective of artists, activists and rasquache historians who reside in Los Angeles. Dedicated to the systematic investigation of space, memory and displacement, the PRS understands history as a battleground of the present, a location where hidden & forgotten selves hijack & disrupt the oppression of our moment.”

¡Hijole!… what does that mean? As an example, the PRS initiated Operation Invisible Monument, where the important but invisible landmarks of LA were commemorated with mock historic plaques courtesy of the pochistas. One such plaque was placed on the downtown LA building where the whitewashed mural of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Tropical America, is currently being restored. In part the plaque read “Tropical America continues to be invisible, even as it undergoes the process of restoration; the date which it will be recovered for the eyes of the public remains uncertain. For 70 years it has existed under a veil, whitewashed, a symbol of an erased history that yet endures; an extant but secret Mexican and Indigenous heart for the city of Los Angeles.” Needless to say, the official looking plaque was taken down by city officials within hours. Sandra de la Loza will be moving to Mexico city for the summer, where she intends to communicate with the world through her web log on the thriving art/activist scene in Ciudad de México. You can view Sandra’s web site at: www.hijadela.com [ posted by artist, Mark Vallen ]

Xicano artist, Saenz, designed this flag to commemorate the Xicano masses defending their community of Baldwin Park, California against the racist “Save Our State” organization. Saenz’s original design was inspired by the Cuban Revolution “M-26-7″ Armbands, only the artist reversed the fields to symbolize a mirror to that revolution. Red symbolizes revolution, black is for strength and white the Aztec color for Aztlan (mythical homeland of the Aztecs, the “place of the white heron”, seen by many as the Southwest of the US). At the center is a Hummingbird icon of Huiztlilapochtli, the premiere Aztec deity and god of war. Saenz chose the Hummingbird because of an eyewitness account of the appearance of a blue hummingbird during the blessing at the counter-demonstration in Baldwin Park on May 14, 2005. Saenz uses Caló to inscribe the flags he designs - he says, to honor the Pachucos that began the Xicano movement. Caló is the unique language spoken by Xicanos, and this flag displays the words “Con Safos”, a statement that can be translated as, “Nothing you say will change this”. Also on the flag are the words “United People of Aztlan”. To the Aztecs Aztlan was their place of origin, and the Pachucos of the 60s incorporated the term Aztlan into Caló. Xicanos, most being Pachucos, or greatly influenced by Pachucos, expanded the term Aztlan to mean the lands ceded to the USA by Mexico in 1849. Aztlan is also an attitude of personal, political, social and economic empowerment necessary to master one’s own destiny.

Avenue 50 Studio in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles is holding a special one hour free workshop on the Aztec Calendar. Artist Leo Limon demonstrates to participants a hands-on application on the signs of the Aztec calendar. Come and learn what sign you were born under in the Aztec tradition. Fun for the whole family! Please join us on Saturday June 11th, 2005, from 11:00 to 12:30 pm. Avenue 50 Studio is located at 131 No. Avenue 50, Highland Park, CA 90042. Please call Kathy Gallegos for reservations, 323/258/1435, and be sure and tell her Xispas sent you! www.avenue50studio.com

[ In this week’s Column of the Americas, commentator Roberto Rodriguez addresses the issue of immigration, jobs, and Black & Latino unity ]

Washington D.C. - After presenting on the new language of exclusion during a recent Black Issues in Higher Education conference, the first question posed is: “Many Blacks feel that illegal aliens are taking jobs from African Americans. Can you comment?” The question is tension-laden and comes on the heels of Mexican President Vicente Fox’s fumbling statement about “Mexicans taking jobs that even Blacks won’t do.” In anti-immigrant rhetoric, “illegal aliens” translates into Mexicans and Central Americans. Yet, this is not an anti-immigrant group. Quite the opposite as many here in the packed ballroom are civil rights veterans. As such, the question needs to be answered, not danced around. And so here, the same question is posed - stripped of its niceties: Are Mexicans taking jobs from Blacks?

The truth is, it’s employers who have the power to give or take jobs, not other workers. Yet, the idea of Mexicans taking jobs from Americans (and of draining social services) began during the early 20th century, resulting in periodic mass deportations. In the 1980s, someone within the anti-immigrant movement decided that these jobs - “the ones no one else would do” - belonged to Blacks. While this became an unquestioned political mantra, no one questioned why Blacks had been remanded to these worst jobs. In the 1990s, these jobs also came to belong to “native born Hispanics.” And thus, we can see the evolution of this divisive discourse. Fox’s answer was but a bumbling variation on this theme. During good times, anti-immigrant rhetoric doesn’t work. That’s why this movement historically has turned to scapegoat politics to get people to accept their “the Mexicans are invading and want their land back” scenarios. This actually is why Mexican migration is unique; most are indigenous or indigenous-based mestizos, coming across but a few miles … to lands that were formerly Mexico’s. Previously, it was (and is) indigenous land (despite Spain’s colonial claims to it). European immigration of course involves the crossing of an entire ocean. Unable to successfully argue against Mexican indigeneity (some bigots claim that Mexicans are actually Spaniards), anti-immigrants found it easier to resort to divide and conquer tactics: Get Blacks to blame Mexicans and you prevent a powerful coalition and divert attention from the fact that U.S. corporate culture - in cahoots with government - is engaging in the super-exploitation of all human beings worldwide, particularly these two peoples at home.

African Americans thoroughly understand dehumanization and the politics of blame. Yet, it’s another story during hard times. For some, it’s easy to be diverted and easier to lash out and blame those different from us. It’s easier to blame Mexicans than it is to recognize that it is America’s rapacious corporate culture that is causing instability throughout the world - creating high unemployment at home (due to outsourcing) and super-exploitation abroad. This is what causes peoples to migrate. Meanwhile, Mexicans are also taught by U.S. culture to view African Americans, Asians and American Indians in a dehumanized manner (and vice versa). These attitudes are easily assimilated.

Couple this with a demonstrably illegal war - which diverts hundreds of billions from critical domestic needs - and it becomes fodder for such politics. In this context, Mexicans are easy to blame, this while others blame Arabs (which justifies these insane permanent wars). American Indians are accused of not paying taxes and being casino-rich. And the subtext to all this is America’s unresolved racial problems. People of color, and African Americans in particular, continue to be imprisoned, warehoused and criminalized at unprecedented rates, this while unemployment and murder rates remain sky high. In this climate, scapegoat politics (to people of all colors) becomes seductive. That’s why “foreigners” always come in handy. Jews too, and nowadays, abortion and gay marriage also make for good distractions. The presence of millions of Mexicans/Central Americans - living a dehumanized existence as “illegal human beings” — is a testament that there’s something wrong with nation-states (United States and sending nations) that facilitate their exploitation. These migrants are not the problem, but the symptom of a problem. In this climate, war, drastic cuts in social services, high unemployment and super-exploitation — becomes justifiable and probable — as long as we’re all busily distracted and entertained by the politics of blame. After my response, a woman comments: “In South Carolina, when these workers come to work in the fields, we simply say, ‘The Indians are coming home.’ ” Perhaps the days of divide and conquer are numbered. It begins by rejecting the notion of legal and illegal human beings.

[ © Column of the Americas 2005. To reach the writers, contact: XColumn@aol.com ]

This past May around 50 anti-immigrant activists from the “Save Our State” organization held a protest in Baldwin Park, California, against the “invasion of the United States by illegal immigrants.” The xenophobes were met by an angry crowd of nearly 1000 Chicanos, Latinos, and their allies, who denounced SOS as a racist organization bent on dividing the people of California. It comes as a surprise then that ultra-nationalists have called for a second demonstration in Baldwin Park, this one scheduled for Saturday, June 25th., at the corner of Pacific & Downing (at the Metrolink Rail Station). The SOS website published the call for the protest, stating that “Americans are tired of the unchecked third world invasion of illegal aliens. They are tired of watching their great American culture disappear, only to watch it be replaced by other cultures that are inferior and contradictory to everything this country was built upon.” It’s tiring to have to remind such people that places like Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Barbara and San Francisco were not founded or named by the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock - or that the people who first inhabited these places had brown skin. It is an outrage when the racists of SOS publicly proclaim on their website “Make no mistake, our opponents are savages.” European invaders dehumanized the red nations who lived in the Americas by calling them “savages”, and what followed next was genocide. While the reactionaries of SOS insist they are not racists, the use of the word “savages” in describing their brown skinned opponents exposes their actual feelings. Meanwhile the Minuteman vigilante group that set up armed patrols at the US/Arizona border is moving its operations to California. On May 25th., Minuteman project founder Jim Gilchrist spoke at a meeting of his followers in Garden Grove, Califas. His address to some 200 followers was the target of around 300 demonstrators who condemned the group for its racism. During the protest a Minuteman supporter drove his car through the picket line, hitting 8 people, two of which were taken away in an ambulance. The driver was arrested but later all charges against him were dropped. The Minuteman hope to begin patrolling the California/Mexico border this summer.

[ Here's another great opinion piece from Column of the Americas, which of course is written by Roberto Rodriguez and Patrisia Gonzales. In his editorial titled Mexican and Indian Always, Roberto puts Antonio Villaraigoza's being choosen as the new mayor of L.A. in historical context, and argues that while that victory is of historical significance.... we still have a long way to go ]

As has been universally acknowledged, Antonio Villaraigoza’s victory as mayor of L.A. this past week is of historic proportions. Coupled with two other major developments, his election takes on an even greater national and historic significance. Last weekend, some 40 anti-Mexican bigots were chased out of nearby Baldwin Park as they went from protesting immigration to protesting the Mexican-Indian heritage of the region and continent. What drew their ire are several inscriptions on a monument. One reads: “This land was Mexican once, was Indian always and is, and will be again.” Another one reads: “It was better before they came.” Artist Judy Baca says that the latter quote refers to a statement by a white civic leader who was lamenting the influx of Mexican immigrants into the area - not an anti-white statement as the detractors were claiming.

The protest reveals that the anti-immigrant movement is indeed anti-Mexican and anti-Central American, and that these communities are not docile and dormant. In response to the protest, some 500 counter-protestors sent the small group of extremists scurrying home, reminding the world that accepting insults belongs to another era. These hate-mongers had been emboldened by the armed Minuteman militia project (encouraged by Gov. Schwarzenegger and egged on by Lou Dobbs at CNN) that patrolled the Arizona border last month. Another equally important development is this week’s inauguration of the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA. It’s been a long 36-year wait, and the symbolism is stark. Villaraigoza attended UCLA during the early years of Chicano Studies (early 70s) when students of color were scarce and not welcome and Chicano Studies was viewed as an illegitimate discipline. This was also the early years of MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), a student activist organization that was also viewed in a similar light. (Some high schools and universities across the nation continue to view MEChA in a negative light).

Despite the efforts of the extreme right wing to demonize MEChA (along with Chicana/Chicano and Ethnic Studies) Villaraigoza’s victory is not so much a vindication of the era’s politics of decolonization as it is an affirmation of the larger and current global struggle for equality, human rights and human dignity. Villaraigoza’s victory comes at a time when the anti-immigrant movement has been invigorated by the passage of the REAL ID Act - an apartheid-type law that restricts undocumented immigrants from entering federal buildings, boarding planes and getting a driver’s license. (Aren’t we all comforted by the knowledge that the next terrorist that ploughs a truck bomb into a federal building, airport, hotel or shopping center will be fully licensed?)

The reality is that it is a fear-driven anti-Mexican measure, not unlike many other Department of Homeland Security initiatives. (While DHS anti-terrorism operations at airports and other facilities have snagged some 1,100 undocumented workers the past two years, they have netted zero terrorists. This is why Villaraigoza’s victory is historic; because it affirms the politics he has been a part of since the 1960s. Normally, this would be irrelevant, but it is so because those are the politics that the extreme right has been vilifying for years. It is these same extremists that have been haranguing Villaraigoza and other elected officials over their involvement in the human rights struggles of that earlier era. This is also why the inauguration of the Chicana and Chicano Studies department is of equal importance and linked to his victory and also linked to the situation in Baldwin Park. Ethnic Studies is about memory - and precisely why it is in the crosshairs nationwide of those same forces. Without that memory, the extremists get to invent their own history and challenge not just the humanity and indigeneity of the people, but of the land itself.

The anti-immigrants are deluded by their own biases, convincing themselves that they are not anti-Mexican nor anti-immigrant - just anti-illegal alien. Here’s a news flash by way of every major religion and great world philosophy: Ningun ser humano es illegal - no human being is illegal. Humanity’s challenge is not to create more illegal categories or larger hunted populations, but to chart a course for the day when there will no longer be any more legal or illegal citizenship or human categories. That may take 100 years, but that course can be charted now. Villaraigoza has to run the city of the future, but if he so chooses, he can also join in that other leadership role. Either way, he deserves a historic congratulations.

[ Illustration: "Ningun Ser Humano Es Illegal - No Human Being Is Illegal" by Mark Vallen ©. Column of the Americas 2005 © The writers can be reached at: XColumn@aol.com ]

Chanting “Education is a Right” and “Student Power”, hundreds of students in Oakland, California walked out of their schools on May 17th, 2005, and marched on Oakland City Hall to demand changes in the public education system. Pulled together by Organize Da B.A.Y. (Bay Area Youth), a coalition of high school and middle school students, the protest was timed to coincide with the historic Brown vs. Board of Education verdict of May 17th, 1954, which abolished racial segregation in public schools. Raza, Asian, African American, and Anglo youth hit the streets together to protest inadequate education funding and the No Child Left Behind Act. The Oakland City Council passed a resolution in support of the student action, proclaiming May 17th as Take Back Our Schools Day. The official website for Organize Da B.A.Y. explains the struggle in the student’s voice: “The United States educational system is in an enormous crisis as our government continues to make educational budget cuts. The United States has money for war and prisons but not for our schools. It is a shame that this country is the wealthiest nation in the world, yet it cannot provide all of our students with a quality education. Furthermore, it is a disgrace that California is now rated as 48th of the 50 states in the amount spent per pupil on education. Our right to an education is under attack!” If you still think today’s youth are apathetic, you need to visit: www.organizedabay.org

[ Author Luis J. Rodriguez comments on the election victory of Antonio Villaragoisa ]

“I hope to work with Antonio on major key issues – most notably in the arts (LA can lead the nation as a pristine example of what an arts agenda can do to transform blight to beauty and deep divisions to unifying creative endeavors), but also around gangs and violence. There are amazing peace and healing efforts throughout the city that have been minimized, without proper funding, and often pushed aside. Most of the money around gangs and violence is in law enforcement and prisons. While there’s a place for police in any workable package for community peace, much more has to be done on the front end of the problem – with schools, healthcare, decent recreation, creative options, and meaningful work. One man can’t do this alone. One man’s leadership, however, can galvanize the energy, vision, and social forces already in place to transform and transcend the deep and ongoing problems plaguing the country’s second largest city.”

[ read LJR's entire commentary on Villaragoisa's historic election, at www.luisjrodriguez.com/blog ]