Elenamary

I went to see Barack Obama speak in Dublin, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and a suburb where one of my favorite bloggers, El Oso, spent part of his childhood.

Speakers included some of my favorite Ohio Democrats including:

• Richard Cordray, I totally love Richard Cordray and he is a big supporter of Latinos in Ohio),
• Mary Jo Kilroy, another big supporter of Latinos and has worked with Migrant Farm working unions including FLOC for decades.  She is an amazing grassroots organizer.
• Sherrod Brown and Ted Strickland both of whom give you the feeling of old school AFL-CIO Clintonite democrats.  Here is an entry on my first thoughts on Ted Strickland.
• And the last Ohio Democrat to speak, was John Glenn.

When John Glenn was introduced the crowd around me began to boo.  I was appalled.  They weren’t booing at John Glenn they were booing at the fact that he was going to speak.  The people around me had come to see Barack Obama speak and were loudly complaing “Who is John Glenn?”  “When is Obama going to speak?”  They seemed honestly surprised that there were other speakers.  And I kept hearing the question “Who is she?”  “Who is he?”  I could not understand how people at a political rally didn’t know who their own governor was!

I thought how uninformed are these people that came to see Obama?  But I don’t know if uninformed is the word or idea I want.  When Obama began to speak the same people who had booed when John Glenn was introduced and asked who Senator Brown was, began to quote Obama’s speech.  They quoted his speech while he spoke the way gay boys sing along to Madonna.  It was crazy.

I finally got my computer back today after a series of epic fails.  I still have a few things to do on it, but things are definitely running smoother.  I left my computer at a friends house the last couple days while he worked on it.  My computer, more so my computer bag, now has a distinct odor.  Not a bad odor just a distinct one that reminds me of my friend and makes me laugh every time I catch a whiff.

Blogging will return to normal tomorrow.  The last few days, during my internet withdrawal, I took advantage of ChaCha.  ChaCha is a FREE service where you can either call or text random questions that you need urgently answered, a few minutes later you get a text with the answer to your question.  As such my friends and I have asked the following questions:  “The character that plays Ziva on NCIS, what is her ethnicity?”, “What is Nelly Furtado’s ethnicity?”, “What is Barack Obama’s home state?”, “What is the average life expectancy of wealth white man in the United States born in the 1930’s?”,  “What is John McCain’s life expectancy?”, “How many times do you have to trip on Acid in order to be legal insane?”, “What was the controversy behind the song Rapper’s Delight by Sugarhill Gang”.

Answers given were sometimes bias, sometimes a little off, and sometimes wrong but usually right and always lots of fun.  I think I pissed someone off with the John McCain question because I had to ask it twice, since the first time the answer was ignored and the second time, got a response that his age might be in his seventies but that his “biological age” (what that means I don’t know) was 56 and that “he is expected to live for a very, very long time”.  However, to the Sugarhill Gang controversy, I got a response rather quickly, and that was that (which I had forgotten) was that DJ Caz claimed he had written the lyrics and never got a dime for it.

Anyway it is fun tool to have especially if you are going to be out with friends and need to prove a point.

Barack Obama is speaking in Columbus, Ohio this evening.  I am torn whether to go or not.  I am torn whether to go in support or protest.  I am torn that if I do go do I make a sign “Ohio Latinas ♥ Obama”?  Or do I take a sign “Obama voted for the reauthorization of the patriot act”  or “Obama believes in Separate but Equal for Gays”?

Last night, I was listening to a local call in show and a caller claimed that Obama was a socialist.   When asked by one of the guest speakers, Herb Asher professor emeritus of Political Science at OSU, how it was Obama was a socialist the caller claimed three main points,  1.  Obama is Pro Choice, 2. He will only allow limited drilling in Alaska 3. He wants to pull troops out of Iraq.  None of these points argued Dr. Asher had anything to do with socialism.  And if anything were contrary to socialist ideology that would want more government involvement in  for example abortion, while Obama wants less government involvement.

This doesn’t mean I don’t stand behind Obama.  This doesn’t mean that he isn’t inspiring a new and positive movement.  It only means that I don’t think this movement is as radical as either side would like to believe.

Author and blogger, Ana Castillo, wrote her views on the DNCC too,  post on 08/25 (this is not a permalink), and I think in some ways her views articulate how I feel too.

Last night I learned what happens if you type “Barack Me Tonight” into google. I am still giggling about it.

I read an article and was subtly offended by it but I didn’t have a way to articulate why. I’ve been thinking about the article since I read it on Thursday. Then today while driving to pick-up a friend of mine who hangs out with a lot of hipsters, it hit me. What would it be like if I picked up a Spanish language newspaper written by some Latinos who wrote of hipsters moving into their neighborhood and what they were like, and how they viewed their new neighbors and asked them what they thought of racism?

The article is about a photographer Alexandra Copley (her Taqueria blog), who currently has a photography exhibit of taco trailers around Columbus, Ohio. I want to make it clear, I am not offended by Alexandra Copley’s work. It is more that I have a sense of my people being displayed as other worldly as entertainment like zoo animals.

It reminds me of a night when I was hanging out with a bunch of international students from Latin America who were attending OSU, when some sorority girls stopped and seemed entertained at watching us play dominoes, share food, and speak in Spanish. One of the girls said excitedly “I feel like it’s Culture awareness night!” She didn’t mean it as offensive and she was a sweet enough person but it made me uncomfortable. This article gives me a similar feeling, as does the idea of the exhibit. What are the true thoughts of hipsters and yuppies who go that gallery? How do they actually view people of color? What do they gain from the exhibit?

The DNCC starts tomorrow, and I recommend keeping an eye on the following bloguerros who will be in attendance:

Al Giordano: of Narco News has his blog, The Field: Al Giordano Reports the U.S. Presidential Election, where he will be covering the convention.

Edmundo Rocha (aka Xicano Power): his bog ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!: Because there are some things still worth fighting for. I like Xicano Power’s blog a bit more than some in that he’ll put more smack down while others tip-toe around what they want to say in order not to offend…and Xicano Power is not worried about offending.

Liza Sabeter (AKA Blogdiva): Bloguerra of Culture Kitchen and the Daily Gotham. Blogdiva gives a radically honest perspective on everything she covers. I tend to read Culture Kitchen a lot more than the Daily Gotham. Culture Kitchen covers many topics I am interested in (Race, Politics, Gender, Class, Pop Culture) and Daily Gotham focuses mostly on issues concerning the State of New York.

Mamita Mala: one of the first blogs I ever started reading was this one. I expect most news to be slanted by a either a male or heterosexual or white perspective, you won’t get that with Maegan’s blog, Mamita Mala - One Bad Mami: One Radical Nuyorican Mami Writer Livin’ In the Revolutionary Mami’hood.

Matt Ortega: One of my favorite bloguerros will also be at the convention. His blog is crisp and easy to read, his blog is self titled Matt Ortega.

(If there is a bloguerro you think should be added to the list, and I am sure there are, please let me know)

As you can tell no real posts this week (or for the rest of it) as I am super busy IRL.

I did however just get a super tweet from Elizabeth on Twitter Etiquette, and yes I got it via twitter.

For those of you who don’t know what twitter is, I think a great summation of it and its absurdity is given in the etiquette guide:

Technically, this isn’t an article about the things Twitter does, it’s an article about the ways in which you can accidentally annoy people with Twitter. Should you choose to avoid Twitter, that’s fine. Enjoy your coffee. Ours is cold now because we were photographing the latté art to share with all our friends, but you can drink yours in solitude.

If you are interested in know what kind of “Twitter” I am, I guess I would probably say I am for the most part a “responder”.

A blogger blogging on privacy is almost as obligatory as the post “I promise I’ll blog more”.

I emailed some friends yesterday to ask them about their advice on privacy and the internet.

While all the advice given was VERY helpful there were two response that reestablished my acceptance with online visibility:

Prentiss Riddle: Except for e-mail, I make 99% of my stuff public but try not to say anything that would cause irreparable harm if a boss/coworker/GF/ex/kid/etc saw it.
I tend to agree with danah boyd that keeping secrets online is an illusion.
The big hole in this logic is e-mail. Some conversations aren’t worth having if you can’t pretend that they’re private.

Liza Sabater: if having an public voice and influence is what you want, then DEFINITELY,
make it public. there’s no better tool.
there’s a lot of shit i obviously don’t say ’cause … well, it’s private.
i only use twitter as a broadcasting and very public tool.

I recently made my MySpace and Facebook private, while my twitter has always been private. I know I can find out a lot about people online, more than most people realize, and it slightly frightens me. Before I go on a date with a man I do what I like to call a “background check”. I do research on any crimes they may have committed, property they may own, their family, their work, sometimes credit history, past relationships, friends, social networking sites. I want to know who I am getting involved with, my excuse is that I am protecting myself.

Because I knew what was out there I used to limit the information I put out on the internet. For the first few years of my blogging I did not put up pictures of myself. The pictures I posted were ambiguous at best, my most used pic for the longest time was this one:

I was in Miami in 2005 at a conference and a young woman apporached me and asked me if I was Elenamary? She told me that she had recognized me from that photo. She had also been attending the conference and had been trying to decide if it was me or not and on the third day of the conference I wore my hair in a ponytail just like the picture and my neck looked the same. She had recognized me by my neck. My privacy was an illusion.

I tend not to write about people in my life who I think are already semi-known. Everyone else is already writing about them, and they don’t necessarily want one of the few people they’ve chosen to have in their lives writing about them as well. All others in my life are fair game and I write anything I damn please. I did ask KyJah to read over the hand written letter I wrote him, before I posted it in case there was anything he didn’t want me to include…there wasn’t. I also emailed another ex regarding this post, just to let him know;

“i wrote at my blog and i kind of referenced you, i dont want you to come across it and think i never told you, youll know what i am talking about it when you see it… i didn’t think you would be upset by it, only bothered if you came across it having never known it was up…better to give you a head up, that’s all…”

At the Daily Kos convention last summer Liza and I were talking about how Latinos in general use the internet to consume and not to create. I enjoy creating online, and I do as she put it, want a public voice and want to influence. My blog is a mix of private issues and public politics. It is honest and it is me. It was either Carlos or Prentiss who posted a video blog once of a young man sobbing and regretting that he’d posted so much personal information regarding his friends and family online. It was heart felt. I guess there is a privacy line but it isn’t rigid and it may not be a line but a series of circles that overlap and move.

I am going to make my twitter, facebook, and myspace public today…oh Noes!

(I need help migrating/getting back online my blog archives from 2002 to to 2007…if anyone can help me with this I have no idea where to start or where some of it even is).

Back in the spring of 2004 I blogged about Barack Obama and how all would fall in love with him (I of course cannot link to it since my archives are down). I wrote that he was progressive, eloquent, and handsome as sin. I wanted him to be my state senator. I didn’t think he would be running for President until 2012 but I called everything else pretty accurately (yeah I am smug). I will be voting for Barack Obama in November or maybe even early in September via an absentee ballot. However, I am no longer smitten with him.

Now, that we are this close and it looks like he can actually win it, I feel I can now criticize. He is the best we’ve got but not the best. I disagree with him on many things and find him to be too conservative for my liking. I bet his personal politics or so I would like to think are more progressive than the ones he portrays.

I assume his political ideology that is demonstrated is the one he needs to portray in order to get elected. I believe that he could not get elected if he were to come out and say for example “I believe in gay marriage and anything less could at best only be separate but equal and as a black man in this country I am offended as hell by that idea”.  I would like to believe that at his core he is offended but that the exterior is what has gotten him this far.

I like this image, and I stole it from my compadre El Tin, it sums up how I view Obama.

I no longer will judge you, Bukowski, by the tiny clip of you kicking the shit out of your girlfriend (I’d seen the whole documentary not just the clip and it had disturbed me). Nor will I judge you Slug, by your womanizing.

I’ve had issues with Slug (of Atmosphere fame) because of the widespread gossip of his womanizing. An ex of mine (and friend of Slug’s), who is as I see it also a womanizer, would even occasionally mention some of Slug’s behavior as womanizing. I like Slug’s music, love his music but wouldn’t allow myself to admit it. How could I like someone who occasionally behaved in ways I was totally against?

El Oso and I even discussed it a few years back when I mentioned I was going to an Atmosphere show:

“EM,

I’m jealous. Although, last night I was talking to the person who first introduced me to Atmosphere on a mix tape (ah the lost art of the mix tape) which had The Woman With The Tattooed Hands on it. She said she forever lost her faith in Slug when she saw him live. He was bringing up random girls on stage, making out with them, then talking shit and kicking them off. It’s a second hand account and rappers don’t have to be heroes, but I certainly expected something more from someone as thoughtful (ie. full of thought) as Slug.”

The ex who would mention Slug’s treatment of women, is also a decently well known musician, and he spoke more about his admiration for Slug then he did of the womanizing. He would speak of Slug’s dedication to his music, to his work. He’d tell me about Slug always working while on tour, always working to get his name out there. Slug, himself, has rhymed about that struggle and the sacrifices that he has made because of his self-promotion. My ex stated that he would never be as well known as Slug, for many reasons but for one, because he would never be willing to work at it as hard as Slug had or give-up time with his own children.

It was today that I realized how hard Slug, Atmosphere, have worked at their music. Today I turned on my car radio and their song “You” was playing. Later I heard the same song coming out of a parked car in the parking lot of the welfare office. As I drove home from work today an SUV pulled up along side next to me with the same song playing. At happy hour with my girlfriend, she mentioned hearing an interview on BBC with Slug today and how she was shocked the BBC was interviewing him.

I’ve got to admit it Slug has worked hard and deserves all he can get. He shouldn’t be judged by a small part of his life, but as a whole person, and like all of us, he isn’t perfect.

It is unfair for El Oso, my ex, or myself to judge Slug on rumors or even small parts of his life. We can in fact, and do, still admire Slug, as El Oso put it a few years ago: “Slug could very well be my favorite poet of his generation.”
And I think El Oso is right. Atmosphere’s new album is one of my favorite albums of all time. Respect given where respect is deserved; Slug is an amazing poet and a hard worker. Keep up the good work Slug, and if you come to Columbus, I’ll make you a home cooked meal.

You can listen to some Atmosphere here, some Slug here, or listen to the You song (as well as some other new songs) here.