NewsTaco

By Salvi In The City

If this year’s movie “Bridesmaids” and its Wilson Philips, laser-ridden, fist-pumping finale taught us anything (other than that it’s perfectly okay to soil yourself in a stolen wedding dress in the middle of oncoming traffic), it’s that crude, sketchy-girl sketches are funny again — to everyone. And that’s a good thing, and comedienne Jesenia Bailey knows it.

In their third season on the comedy stage, Bailey and her sketch troupe Ay Que Funny (AQF) give itching privates, menstrual cramps, and carb-craving the musical treatment that is strong enough for a man, but definitely made by a woman. If you’re starting to feel like Adele’s music sounds like the cue sheet for a Paxil commercial, well grab yourself a seat, pour yourself a whiskey, and give these ladies your attention: as Beyoncé’s hip flexors warned, it appears girls do indeed run this motha.

In one gut-busting sketch, AQF graphically tackles the tribulations of hair removal (I’m a sucker for schadenfreude, so I found this sketch particularly hilarious). Actresses parody Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” only, instead, the choruses “Rolling in the Deep,” are replaced with “Shouldn’ta Shaved My [Privates].” You can relate, but guess what, now there’s a song all about your troubles!

It’s not all razor burn here, though.

The show is refreshingly like the 90s’ comedy sketch series “In Living Color” (I know you remember pre-“Selena” J. Lo as a “Fly Girl”), where the mundane and the multicultural are extracted from their respective frames of reference and translated into absurdly comical situations with universal appeal. In one number, set to Rockwell and Michael Jackson’s brilliant 1984 tune “Somebody’s Watching Me,” Bailey dons a poncho, sombrero, and a beer to boot, as she plays up the stereotypical Mexican dude living on the border. Swigging beer with a wide stance, Bailey convincingly plays an undocumented buey who discovers the guy he was chatting up was an undercover INS agent. The song is already such an excellent and appropriate pop culture reference, but Bailey adds some light humor to offer some commentary on an otherwise heavy and current topic.

Other musical turns are similarly female-driven, but less weighty than they are, well, bloated. In “I Feel Crampy,” cast member Arielle Rosales — who could turn to music if her comedy career fails; homegirl’s got some pipes! — takes on “Westside Story’s” “I Feel Pretty” to wax poetic on the joys of PMS. And in “Hero,” the girls shun Mariah Carey’s dated, feel-good version of the song to tackle the temptation of diet enemy #1: carbohydrates. Crawling on all fours to shovel a giant hero into her mouth and replacing lyrics with one-liners like, “And then a hero comes along/with swiss cheese and parmesan,” actress Khamali Murray delivers a performance that would make Oprah literally eat her yo-yo dieting heart out.

Don’t get me wrong, AQF is more than just estrogen — and indeed the gents in the cast bring a much-needed gender juxtaposition to the stage. Dwayne McCleese and John Sartori are two of the show’s men who feel right at home with the women. McCleese is just as funny as the flamboyantly gay yuppie best friend in a sketch about the “sad” realities of relocating to the “ghettos” beyond 125th Street in Manhattan, as he is playing the foul-mouth husband scolding his wife for not trimming the weeds beneath her belt. And although Sartori’s sketch about a stalker keeping girls locked in a dungeon feels out of place in the rest of this set, he shines as the schlubby, pasty guy marching around in gray sweats and tube socks in the white-boy sloth character that has become de rigeur in comedy these days.

Watching the show, you realize that the troupe is young and has a lot of room for comedic growth and consistency. Self-editing would be a plus (here, for example, a sketch about Pinocchio breaking a cookie jar set to Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” falls flat), and you sense — as with many aspirational artists — the “spaghetti on the wall” tactic of throwing out quantity over quality to see what sticks. But if you’re anything like me, half the fun of live comedy is seeing how actors improvise and recover from those awkward pauses. And besides, staged comedy sketches are a nice departure from your run-of-the-mill comedy club stand-up — particularly when you have a group of young, multicultural talents who are hungry to succeed.

Bailey says that every show is different, so if musicals are not necessarily your thing, you’re in luck: the next show, scheduled for October 30, is a Halloween Special, and November 11 is the group’s season finale.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve learned my lesson, and I’m late for my wax.

Salvi In The City is a Latino writer of Salvadoran descent who lives in New York City.

By Lacy MacAuley, otherwords.org

I was standing on a street one evening near my home in Washington, DC — it seems like ages ago now — with a chatty friend who travels often to New York. He mentioned that a few New Yorkers were planning an “occupation” of Wall Street. Not knowing what I was getting myself into, I said, “I’m there.” A few days later, I boarded a bus, backpack and sleeping bag in tow.

I was there when Occupy Wall Street began.

After some chilly nights in Liberty Plaza, I returned to Washington to help plan an occupation in my city. Others in Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, and so many more cities have begun their own occupations. Occupy DC started October 1, and is still going strong.  Many people are asking why. While the occupation of city squares all over the nation is inspiring many people, others are (understandably) a bit perplexed.

But I think people understand more than they know. Something is very wrong with our country and our world. The rich got richer from our economic crisis and the poor barely got the crumbs from their banquet table.

Now big corporations are asking for a new tax break, a tax holiday that they say will create jobs – while the last time Congress granted that tax break the main result was layoffs and downsizing. Corporations are sitting on over $2 trillion in cash but aren’t hiring. Our environment is under assault. Natural disasters are laying waste to towns like Joplin, Missouri, and some lawmakers even held up relief efforts by threatening to trim education, health care, and other vital services to free up money for emergency aid.

We keep paying for wars and people keep dying in them. About 50 million Americans have no health insurance, and too many of them go bankrupt paying for health care. Agribusiness is destroying family farms. Poverty is rampant. Congress can’t stop squabbling. Corporations have too much control. About 25 million of us are unemployed and underemployed and can’t find jobs. Too many college graduates can’t find jobs. Our children’s future is uncertain.

So, many of us are fed up. We’ve brought our anger and hopes to our city squares. We’re not leaving until we see real movement toward change. More people are arriving every day and joining us. In liberated squares, parks, and plazas all over the country, we’re discussing challenges and talking about solutions. Every voice is equal, and all of us are expected to raise our voices, our ideas, our concerns. We’re reaching consensus. We’re figuring it out as we go.

All I can say is that true democracy takes time. At Occupy DC, we meet daily to discuss why we’re there. The unemployed, the foreclosed, and the sick-of-it-all are coming together to discuss the world that we want to see and how to get there. We have big problems. We need big solutions. And those big solutions take time.

While on Wall Street and on McPherson Square on K Street in Washington, I’ve learned how to change my clothes in my sleeping bag. I’ve learned how to run a generator, which keeps us in electronic touch with the outside world. I’ve learned the best methods for hauling plastic bags of donated bread, pastries, and bagels nine city blocks. I’ve learned to appreciate tarps.

I’ve also learned that when we all raise our voices together and work in the spirit of true democracy, we can work toward real solutions and real changes to our world. We the people tend to agree on a lot more than we realize. It just takes coming together, talking things through, and not leaving until things change.

And that’s what the occupations are doing: We’re staying put, and taking the time for true democracy to work.

Lacy MacAuley is a member of the media team at Occupy DC and Media Relations Manager at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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By María Cardona

I appeared on a couple of segments on CNN this week where the topic was the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. A question raised was whether this was political. The Republican/tea party spokesperson said yes, arguing that labor unions were behind it (in fact the labor unions did not join until this week). I said it was economic, but political in the sense that you have a political party — the GOP — entrenched with the wealthy and Wall Street while doing nothing to protect middle-class America. But I was wrong. It is not economic. And it is not political. It is personal.

Executive pay is now about five times higher than it was in 1980, adjusted for inflation. The average salary for the rank-and-file American worker, however, is about the same as it was in 1980. Really? Does American exceptionalism exist only at the top 1% of our workforce? Did our CEOs really get 5 times better than they were in 1980 and our workers remain just ho-hum average? I don’t think so. Neither does the rest of America. When there is this kind of disparity while these same CEOs are paying taxes at a rate lower than their secretaries, their receptionists, and the people who clean their offices, it is personal.

When he was chair of the DNC, my former boss, the late Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, used to say in his stump speech that we live in an era where “the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the middle-class got squeezed.” This was back in 1992. It could not be truer today. While President Obama has not done things perfectly, he has injected some fairness and balance into the economy to spur growth and job creation. More needs to be done, but his attempts have been met mostly by gridlock and a GOP that only wants to see him fail.

In the meantime, corporate profits are at an all-time high, but corporations are paying lower taxes than ever before. Some aren’t paying any at all. This week, we see banks tacking on extra fees — which, contrary to what they argue, would lead them to 13% more in profits than they were making before the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act went into effect. At the same time, CEOs, while also making record amounts of money (the average CEO makes $11 million a year while the average person makes $40,000), have laid off millions of Americans while sending our jobs overseas. These are not nameless, faceless Americans. They are our neighbors, our friends and even our families. It is personal.

Republicans continue to protect this twisted system. And to add insult to injury, Republican legislators and the GOP presidential candidates want to eliminate the protections the middle class gained from the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by Democrats and signed by Obama.

Does the crash of 2008 ring a bell? Are Republicans really advocating that the greed of Wall Street be put before the needs of the American people? Yes, and here’s why: In the 2010 election cycle, corporations spent over $275 million getting politicians elected and spent almost $3 billion lobbying them. While some of those donations went to Democrats, the vast majority went to Republicans. It’s no wonder Republicans want less government accountability and more tax giveaways for billionaires and giant companies — that’s what their corporate donors demand. I, for one, take it personally.

So does Obama. The second question I was asked this week was whether the demonstrators had a “candidate” in the race. They do. President Obama. He acknowledges Americans are angry. He knows times are tough and he continues to fight to restore some much-needed protections for exactly the people in that crowd at Wall Street. He and Democrats want more balance in the system. One way of getting there is the Buffett Rule — Obama’s proposal, named after billionaire Warren Buffett, that those making more than $1 million pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.

Critics scream “class warfare,” and decry the attacks on the “job creators,” and cry “socialism” as they continue to preserve this unjust system that is giving rise to what could be a powerful and sustained movement.

Here are my answers:

• Class warfare? You bet. As Buffett has said so eloquently, this country has been engaged in class warfare for decades, and guess what? His class won. It is now time to stand up and fight for fairness for the middle class and a balanced approach for working-class families, who have labored just as hard as America’s top CEOs but have not had the same kind of increases in salary.
• On job creators? Who are they? The majority of job creation comes from our small businesses, none of which are raking in the salaries of the top 1% of wealthy Americans. So asking the top 1% of wealthy Americans to pay their fair share and pay at least as high a tax rate as their workers is not class warfare or an attack on “job creators” or socialism. It is in fact the American way. And America agrees.

Meanwhile, in the greatest country in the world, Latino children now rank highest in child poverty rates. Latinos and African-Americans suffer from much higher unemployment rates than others.

With all this taken together, is it any wonder that our masses could be giving rise to our own “spring”? While it is no Arab Spring, the movement is spreading. Not economic, not political, but personal. Republicans would do well to take it personally too.

Maria Cardona is a Democratic strategist and a principal at the Dewey Square Group, where she founded Latinovations.  She is also a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, and former communications director to the Democratic National Committee.

Throughout the country protesters have gathered in the financial centers of major cities to voice frustrations over corporate greed, and, in the movement’s opinion, to bring attention to Wall Street’s deliberate and continuing exploitation of the bottom 99% of the country.

Protestors clearly hellbent on destroying the nation have, in some instances, even clashed violently with authorities. More than 800 protestors, for instance, have been arrested in New York.

So, as the whole fiasco gains momentum and organization, it elicits some discomfort from those considered by the protestors to be “the ruling elite.” Lots of bejeweled fingers are uncomfortably tugging at expensive, imported shirt collars in cartoonish gestures in hopes of relieving the current class discomfort.

Wall Street-beholden politicians in particular have found a way to ensure that class frustrations are vented more effectively, more palatably. For everyone’s sake.

What we need, they say, is a more sanitized and non-threatening way for these delusional protestors to blow off some class steam and go back to hunting city pigeons for survival and living under bridges.

A game tentatively entitled Occupy Wall Street, The Board Game allows players to role play “CEO” and “the working poor.” One player wears an imported Italian suit and the remaining players shout loudly and wave homemade signs.  (Don’t pull the “Crowd Control Card,” unless you want your fellow poor to get a face full of mace as the CEO enjoys a Chianti.)

Republicans insist that everyone wins when class warfare happens at home, quietly — with the blinds drawn. It’ll be on store shelves soon…too bad you won’t be able to afford it.

Your handsome and humble servant  —

El Guapo

[Photo by D.C. Atty, P. Weiskel]

When East WillyB premiered last Spring, the show received a lot of positive coverage upon the release of it’s first episode.  Much was dissected in terms of how the show tackles race, gentrification, “Latinoness,” education, and about its talented and impressive cast.  Now that it’s available to view in its entirety, here’s a post-season breakdown of why it’s definitely worth a watch.

1.) East WillyB is funny.

The situations are commonplace yet creative, the characters are familiar but not cliche, the jokes poke fun at Latinos without dumbing them down, and everyone cusses and talks trash in some of the most clever dialogue I’ve heard all year.

2.) It breaks stereotypes while playing with them.

We’ve heard them all before – Puerto Ricans are loud, Mexican chicks are sassy and like to wear big earrings while mouthing off, Central Americans love them some futbol, and Latinos in general are total chismosos. But for every person of Latin American descent who fits the mold, there are two others who don’t and will make fun of them for exhibiting said characteristics.  Regardless of which category you fit into, you’ll still enjoy the show.

3.) Co-creators Yamin Segal and Julia Ahumada Grob made the show with you in mind.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and make the assumption about some our readers: Latino, or at least interested in Latino topics, bilingual and/or bicultural, urban or suburban dwellers, cultured, educated, youngish or young at heart, with a good sense of humor and somewhat web saavy.

4.) It’s urban but not melodramatic.

East WillyB focuses on the everyday residents of a big city, mixing it up together in that concrete jungle called Brooklyn, living their lives as the small business owners, artists, real estate agents, bartenders, alcoholics, hustlers, schemers, and dreamers that keep New York moving.  As opposed to the all too frequent Hollywood version of Latino urban where the result is gangs fighting over drug territory, pregnant chola alleyway knife fights, or ICE raids in downtown sweatshops.

5.) Each webisode is three minutes or less.

That’s less than a normal crappy network television commercial break where you’re stuck watching laundry detergent and car commercials.  The entire season can be streamed in less than half an hour. Watch the first episode and if you don’t like it, you only wasted three minutes.  Although we’re pretty sure you’ll enjoy it and be left wishing it were 10 times as long.

Because the project is done without any big budget backing, the creators of East WillyB rely on social media buzz to spread the word about the show.  So check out the first episode below and if you like it, watch the rest on the official site, become a fan on Facebook or follow them on Twitter @EastWillyB.

[Courtesy Photo; Video by East WillyB]

There’s an ongoing protest that started last month — or did it start when the recession began? — in New York City called Occupy Wall Street. The protest has been loosely organized and spawned similar protests in Los Angeles and Boston since. Everyone from unemployed young people to airline pilots to Professor Cornel West have become involved in the protest. Unlike the Tea Party protests, these protests have been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

The New York Times reported that the protests have spread across the country:

The arrests Saturday of more than 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge for blocking the roadway have energized the movement, and on Monday, new protests were planned for other cities, including Memphis, Tenn.; Allentown, Pa.; and Hilo, Hawaii, according to organizers.

Later this week, rallies are scheduled for Detroit; Portland, Ore.; Minneapolis; and Baltimore, as well as in cities that rarely see such civil disobedience — Mason City, Iowa; Mobile, Ala.; Little Rock, Ark.; Santa Fe, N.M.; and McAllen, Tex., according to Occupy Together, an unofficial hub for the protests that lists dozens of demonstrations planned for the next week, including some in Europe and Japan.

In Chicago on Monday morning, about a dozen people outside the Federal Reserve Bank sat on the ground or lay in sleeping bags to shield themselves from the autumn chill.

Recently, the General Assembly of the movement issued a statement:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

• They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
• They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
• They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
• They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
• They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
• They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
• They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
• They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
• They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
• They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
• They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
• They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
• They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
• They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.
• They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
• They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.
• They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
• They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
• They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
• They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad. They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
• They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *These grievances are not all-inclusive.

The statement then goes on to ask others to join the movement. Have you been participating  in Occupy Wall Street? Do you know someone who has? What do you think about this movement?

[Photos By david_shankbone; david_shankbone; david_shankbone]

There were a lot of stark contrasts this week on our weekly NewsTaco roundup.

For example, while we featured a piece by Salomón Baldenegro about Arizona’s racist stance on ethnic studies, a Texas college implemented the first ever totally online Mexican-American studies degree. While Alabama’s immigration law is resulting in students disappearing from its schools, a Texas non-profit is engaging its Latino students to great results. A recent report found widespread abuses by the Border Patrol, even as a few retired military men in Texas claim that militarizing the border is the only solution to what they fallaciously term a “war zone” in that area of the country.

So, I’m going to break it down for you really quickly here and then list my picks for your extensive perusal. Have a great Sunday!

Sara’s Top Pick:

• Steve Murdock: Educating Latinos Vital To Future Of U.S.

Culture:

Jesenia Bailey found her way into a career in comedy in the most unlikely way — by doing as everything else first. She’s the co-creator and co-producer of the Latino comedy project Ay Que Funny, a Puerto Rican from the Bronx, a dreamer, and someone we wanted to profile in our occasional series on News Taco about how people achieved their American Dreams.

Bailey is a comedic actress and improv performer who believes she found her way into comedy through fate. She told NewsTaco she was someone who never knew the direction of her life. She wanted to be a singer, but couldn’t sing. She went to beauty school, but hated doing hair. She went to trade school and became a disgruntled secretary.

But, oddly enough, she says that’s when fate intervened.

“It was a very depressing environment and I became the person in the office who told the jokes to lighten the air, aka, office clown! And so began my comedy career,” she told us. “After working there for five years, I dared myself into doing standup comedy, which led me to develop my own sketch and improv comedy show, and behold – here I am today, still working in an office! But working every darn day on my craft and performing my passion for comedy every chance I can get — which is mainly on the weekends.”

Ultimately, Bailey hopes to be able to support her family with this passion. She told us she wants to work in TV, because more Latinos need to be on TV, and she’s working on webisodes and a pilot to this end.

“I also want to inspire young and older Latinas to live their dream — there aren’t many people who ‘look like me’ in the entertainment industry and I want to be the one to break the stereotypical Latina mold. Yes, we’re sexy and fabulous, but we’re also smart and funny,” she told us.

Being a woman and a Latina has been a “challenge” in the entertainment industry, Bailey told NewsTaco, but this only inspires her to work harder she said. “As a Latina in comedy, well unfortunately, it’s as if we don’t even exist.  Bottom line – I know I have to work my butt off to make my mark in this industry.  So instead of playing the waiting game for gigs that are casting ‘someone like me’ – I make my own gigs.”

Like many other Latino entrepreneurs we’ve spoken to at NewsTaco, Bailey decided to make her own platform to feature her work. Instead of waiting to hear for work, she made her own, “That’s why I began producing my sketch comedy show Ay Que Funny. Before doing my show, nobody was calling me because casting directors/agents/managers didn’t know that I can bring it – so, by producing my own work, I’ve been able to show them that I am very well capable to produce the comedic goods that need to be brought.”

Ay Que Funny is a SpEnglish comedy showcase of sketch, improv and standup, featuring a talented and culturally diverse mix of cast members and writers based in New York City.

Conceptualized and produced by Jesenia Bailey and Crystal Roman in 2009, Ay Que Funny is now on its third year run of producing comedy awesomeness — both on stage and in film.

Check out one of our latest sketches below.

Ay Que Funny is a SpEnglish sketch, improv and standup showcase featuring a talented and culturally diverse mix of cast members and writers. If you’re in New York check out our live shows at the Broadway Comedy Club, also visit our website, or follow us on Facebook,  Twitter @AyQueFunny_JB or check out our YouTube channel.

[Video By AyQueFunny]

Today as we remember those we lost on 9/11, here are a few remembrances from our News Taco community:

• 9/11 Is No Excuse for Bashing Muslims
• The September 11 Lessons I’ve Learned
• Experiencing The Post-9/11 New York City

Feel free to share your 9/11 experiences or memories with us here in the comments or on Facebook.

[Photo By Meda]

I moved to New York City the summer after 9/11, though I was actually born in Brooklyn, but raised in Miami, so it was a return of sorts. The city was still visibly stunned and the country was astir with its color-coded thing. “Ground Zero” had stopped smoldering months ago, but the clean-up was well under way. Thousands had died, which meant that hundreds of thousands were being directly affected, which then affected the millions grinding it out in the city.

A deep sense of distrust, especially towards Arabs and East Asians, descended on the city like some medieval plague. The summer after 9/11 jobs became scarce as state and federal monies were put on hold so that our “response” might become apparent (nation building price tag and all). The Department of Ed and City University of New York had freezes; this or that association was only hiring internally. The summer after 9/11, New York City still reeled from the pelagic psychic pain and ultra-deep remorse inflicted by those two planes.

The summer after 9/11, the subways were thronged with anti-terror police in body armor, scaring the crap out of everybody. Of course, though, it was for your safety, so unless you were heading up your own cell you shut your mouth and shared the platform with the swat squadron.

We were told numerous times a day that it was the new price of freedom. According to the Daily News, by 2008, the NYPD was already “reinventing itself as an intelligence and homeland security agency” as well as “the nations’ largest police department.” As the country’s hawks played with smoke and mirrors at the United Nations to obtain legitimacy for their eventual invasion of Iraq, New York City became one of the safest and best patrolled cities in the world with “37,000 officers,” and “tens of millions of dollars – much it from federal grants – on an array of high-tech security measures designed to thwart threats.” This is the reason that the NYPD is the only police force in the world with an international presence as many of its officers work in conjunction with Central Intelligence Agency analysts.

I lived in New York for a total of eight years, in handful of neighborhoods. The last five living in a Harlem enclave (Striver’s Row) in a neighborhood were I stuck out like a sore thumb because I was Latino but not Black. I have lived in an attic on Church Ave in Brooklyn, and right on third Ave in Spanish Harlem, in a Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood where the world would shut down on Friday evenings in preparation for Shabbat. And I have been out and about to the wee hours of the night, intoxicated and stumbling, bumbling through wind-slapped city streets, industrial zones, and hipster kingdoms. And nothing has ever “happened.”

I have never been mugged or pistol-whipped or knifed in the gut or taken advantage of in a violent and aggressive manner. I also taught high school for three years in the Bronx in a poor neighborhood with a large gang presence. So, I have seen fights, melees, and minor bar brawls, but I benefited directly from the safety and surveillance of a post-9/11 heavy police presence. Which is to say, 9/11 was more than a day in history for New York City, it was a pivotal moment in that city’s identity which, for better or worse, becomes your reality as soon as you step into the city.

[Photo By join the dots]

I was sitting in the airport in Austin, Texas, yesterday, waiting the last few minutes before my son  had to go through security and board a flight to Los Angeles.

“Might as well untie my shoes now,” he said.

He tugged on the laces and they came undone. He was 10 years old when the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon happened. He was home, sick with a fever, and watched the coverage all day from his bed. It occurred to me that he’s lived half his life with 9/11 and the “War on Terror” as a backdrop. And I wondered at how it made him different than me.

“I don’t like this airport,” he had told me just a few moments earlier. “All the food places are on the other side of security.” He was right, there’s really no place to linger by the ticket counters. “I think they did it on purpose,” I said. I tried to paint a picture of the way it used to be, before the attacks, before our definitions  of freedom and security were shattered.  There was a time, I told him, when airport security wasn’t afraid of what we had in our shoes; when we could walk all the way to the gates and wave by the big windows as the planes pulled back before take off. It sounded cheesy, like some long-ago place. Sometimes it feels like that – long ago, back when.

I had a planned flight to New York that morning ten years ago, a business trip that I never made. I was on my way to the airport when I got the call from my newsroom: the network had cut into programming with live coverage. “It looks bad.” Everything changed that day.

Both my kids are seasoned travelers. They move through airport security with anticipated ease. No complaints, no bother, nothing different – it’s the way it has always been for them. The difference is that they don’t hop through the security hoops out of fear, they do it because to them it’s the way it’s done, period. For those of us from another time the fear is still palpable. There are people in the world who can and will go to great lengths to do something unspeakably terrible – we must be vigilant.

I watched my son as he inched along the snake-line, showed his boarding pass and I.D. to the man with the badge and looked him in the eyes, as is his custom. I went through a mental check list: he didn’t shave, his backpack is a little ripped, his tee shirt says something defiant. I was sure he’d be pegged for a pat-down.

When I was a kid people used to dress-up for travel and flight attendants were called stewardesses. It was a big deal. It all seems so innocent now, looking back at the way we used to go about our business.

September 11th was a watershed in that specific sense. That morning 10 years ago, driving to the airport, the idea of a line at the security gate was impossible – our world hadn’t changed, yet. We were in the midst of the shock. The waves of national rage and suspicion hadn’t hit us.

I watched my son grab two bins. He plopped his shoes in one, took his laptop out of his backpack and put it in the other, tossed the backpack in with the shoes and emptied his pockets. It was a fluid chain of movements; everyone else on the line did it as well. It’s become second-nature.

A couple of years ago I was at the Albuquerque airport, in line waiting to pass the security check. And older man,who apparently hadn’t flown since 9/11, was in front of me. “Why do we have to take our shoes off?” he asked. I told him about the shoe bomber and how now even the heels of our shoes are suspect. “I’m glad he didn’t hide the explosives in his skivvies,” he said.

They’ve got machines that see you in your skivvies now. I wonder if that old guy has been through them yet.

If we’ve learned anything since September 11th, it’s been to live with fear and suspicion, to make it normal.

We didn’t sit back. We did what anyone in similar circumstances would do – we swung with what we had. Ten years later, after the longest and costliest war in our history, we’ve yet to regain what we had. I think our mistake was in trying to go back there, to that peace and innocence.

The world changed that day, and those of us who remember a time before that are aware of how it affected us.

My son stepped through the metal detector, his carry-on things were waiting for him at the other end. He slipped his shoes on and went in search of food. And that was that. It wasn’t new to him. As far as he’s concerned, it’s the way it’s always been.

This Sunday there will be commemorative moments of silence for the victims of the attacks.  The human cost of that day and of the wars since are unfathomable.  When I hear our political bickering and witness our ethnocentric hate I know we’ve not yet healed. I think that has to do with everything else we lost that day. Our sense of security, our ideas about the larger evils in the world. I’ll be remembering those things on Sunday.

I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and texted my son who stood a few feet away, on the sterile side of the airport: let-me-know-when-you-get-there.

Follow victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda

[Photo by redjar]

By J. Richard Cohen, otherwords.org

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, we’ll be transfixed once more by images of the planes ramming into the World Trade Center and people, caught in the flames, leaping to their deaths. We’ll see pictures of the burning Pentagon and hear stories of the heroic firefighters and police officers who sacrificed their lives to save others.

And we’ll be reminded that, despite Osama bin Laden’s death, violent jihadists are still a threat.

We’d be naive to think otherwise. What’s more, the threat has morphed in recent years. While we’ve made progress in eroding al-Qaeda’s capacity to launch attacks from overseas, we’ve seen an increase in plots hatched by “homegrown” terrorists — U.S. citizens or permanent residents inspired by extremist, al-Qaeda-like ideology. Indeed, half of the “homegrown” plots since 9/11 have occurred in the last two years, many of them instigated by the FBI.

There’s yet another danger, not only to our physical security but to our character as a people. It’s a danger that President George W. Bush warned the country about in the days following 9/11: the danger of branding all Muslims as our enemies.

Unfortunately, in recent years we’ve seen a revival of the Muslim-bashing that fueled a 1,600-percent increase in hate crimes against Muslims in 2001.

During the last presidential election, Barack Obama, a Christian, was portrayed as a Muslim and even a terrorist sympathizer.

Then, last year, anti-Muslim activists coalesced in opposition to the so-called “ground zero mosque,” a proposal to build an Islamic center two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center. Exploiting the memory of 9/11, a small cadre of extremists who opposed the project created a national controversy brimming with bigotry and intolerance. They wanted nothing less than to deny American Muslims their rights under our Constitution.

The question some are asking is whether the anniversary of 9/11 will spark another jihadist attack. A more likely possibility? A new round of Muslim-bashing across America from those who want to divide, rather than unite, us — from those who forget there were many Muslims who died on that day and who would equate all Muslims with terrorists.

Their words — their depictions of Islam as a virulent political movement rather than a religion — have consequences.

We saw it in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when a Sikh man was fatally shot outside a gas station in Mesa, Arizona. His killer mistook him for a Muslim.

We saw it in 2008, when three men burned down a mosque outside Nashville.

And we saw it on July 22, when Anders Behring Breivik slaughtered 77 people, mostly teenagers, in Norway.

Breivik cast himself as a Christian knight dedicated to stemming the tide of Muslim immigration. He wanted to jolt his country into recognizing what he viewed as the threat of multiculturalism in Europe. In a 1,500-page manifesto, Breivik cited the words of Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller, and other U.S.-based Islamophobes dozens of times, making clear their influence on him.

So as we mark this solemn anniversary, we must remain vigilant against the threat of terrorism by Islamists who preach an anti-Semitic ideology that is antithetical to our democratic values. At the same time, we must remember that violent jihadists don’t represent Islam any more than the Anders Breiviks of the world represent Christianity. Our democratic values require nothing less.

J. Richard Cohen is president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and antigovernment extremists. www.splcenter.org

[Photo By Viktor Nagornyy]

Ay Que Funny is a SpEnglish comedy showcase of sketch, improv and standup, featuring a talented and culturally diverse mix of cast members and writers based in New York City.

Conceptualized and produced by Jesenia Bailey and Crystal Roman in 2009, Ay Que Funny is now on its third year run of producing comedy awesomeness — both on stage and in film.

Check out one of our latest sketches below.

Ay Que Funny is a SpEnglish sketch, improv and standup showcase featuring a talented and culturally diverse mix of cast members and writers. If you’re in New York check out our live shows at the Broadway Comedy Club, also visit our website, or follow us on Facebook,  Twitter @AyQueFunny_JB or check out our YouTube channel.

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