Category: Opinion

Bilingual commentary — Terms of Endearment in Spanish

by Community Contributor • November 6, 2020 • Comments Off

What if a man is overheard calling his sister “skinny”? Or, worse yet, suppose a wife is seen in public calling her husband “fatty.” Can you imagine the firestorm if a father were to be caught calling his daughter “my little dark girl,” or if a light-skinned woman were to refer to herself as a “little black girl”?

A Twitter flare-up, the likes of which hell hath never known, is exactly what happened when the song “Lonely,” in which Jennifer Lopez, describing herself as a “negrita from the Bronx,” was released a little over a month ago.

Get Out the Vote Nationwide #LULACvota

by Community Contributor • October 30, 2020 • Comments Off

Missed the online registration deadline in your state? Same-day registration is available in-person in the states highlighted above: TURQUOISE – Same-Day Registration during Early Voting Dates ONLY PURPLE – Same-Day Registration on Election Day (November 3) ONLY BLUE – Same-Day Registration during Early Voting AND on Election Day ALASKA – Allows Same-Day registration but ONLY for President and Vice President.

PLEASE NOTE: Same-day registration must typically be done IN PERSON and only at limited locations. An elections official may request a state-issued photo ID and proofs of residency for each new registration. Contact your local / county elections office for specific requirements for same-day voter registration.

Bilingual commentary — The Ongoing Struggle for Dignity

by Community Contributor • October 30, 2020 • Comments Off

In 1945, my father returned home from World War II after taking part in the Normandy Invasion, fighting the Nazis in France and Germany, and surviving the Battle of the Bulge against the German army. Having entered the U.S. Army as a Mexican kid from the streets of Los Angeles, he came out on the other side of the war as an American citizen, battle-hardened and fully expecting to live the American Dream.

Guest commentary — A Votar Mi Gente: Winter in America — Our Vote can bring on a New Day and Save our Democracy

by Community Contributor • October 30, 2020 • Comments Off

We are in our last days out from the 2020 Presidential elections and the very future of this Democracy is in peril. We have Trumps’ criminal Republican Party that will stop at nothing to retain tyrannical power and a mealy mouth and pathetically weak Democratic Party that feints outrage cries foul, but is either strategically out maneuverer at every political turn or rolls over like a broken lap dog and refuses to fight Republican political fire with fire. Our national politics are a mess! On November 3, 2020 the people have the critical and solemn hands-on opportunity through our votes to weigh in on the future of this nation, and in the process quite possibly preserve our democracy against the tyrannical forces that threaten to destroy it!

Bilingual commentary — The Invasion of Olvera Street

by Community Contributor • October 23, 2020 • Comments Off

Olvera Street in Los Angeles is where history, culture, multicultural livelihoods, and now a pandemic all intersect. This street is the cornerstone of the very character and identity of Los Angeles. But now this iconic testament to Mexican culture in one of the nation’s oldest metropolises just south of us here in Ventura County is suddenly having incredulous visions of its demise.

Guest commentary — A Votar Mi Gente: Our Democratic Destiny is in our Vote! Part One

by Community Contributor • October 22, 2020 • Comments Off

National Politics: With less than two week before the Presidential Election, the stakes have never been higher. We must all vote like our live depend on it! It is also incredibly important to focus on the local races because what happens in Washington, D.C., is going to play out in Oxnard.

Bilingual report — VCCoLAB and VCAA sue Ventura County for its adoption of the 2040 General Plan

by Community Contributor • October 15, 2020 • Comments Off

The Ventura County Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business (VCCoLAB) and the Ventura County Agricultural Association (VCAA) on Oct. 15 jointly filed a lawsuit against the County of Ventura in response to the adoption of the County’s 2040 General Plan. VCCoLAB and VCAA assert the County did not meet the basic standards demanded by law for both public review and engagement and environmental impact analysis, resulting in a Plan that detrimentally impacts the agricultural industry, local businesses, and vulnerable populations.

Letter to the Editor — Candidate Forums

by Community Contributor • October 15, 2020 • Comments Off

In an effort to inform voters, the League of Women Voters, Ventura County conducted candidate forums for local city council, mayoral, state senate and assembly elections as well as the Congressional District 26 election.

The League of Women Voters also conducted discussions of the California Ballot propositions and Ojai School Bond K. You can access the video recordings of these events at the following link:

Bilingual commentary — The Lingering Crisis of Hispanic Identity

by Community Contributor • October 9, 2020 • Comments Off

A “crisis” most often refers to intense difficulty or danger that is temporary. A “mid-life crisis” will eventually burn itself out. A “crisis of conscience” will work itself out over time. A “political crisis” will normally resolve itself, ideally without the loss of life or cherished institutions.

Guest commentary — Mexican (Chicano) artists had (have) the most profound and pervasive influence on American (the Americas) art of the 20th & 21st Century

by Community Contributor • October 8, 2020 • Comments Off

I was moved to revise this article that I wrote previously. I recently saw the Netflix documentary Carlos Almaraz: Playing with the Fire. The documentary on the life of Almaraz was co-directed by Elsa Florez Almaraz, an artist and wife of the late Almaraz, and Richard Montoya, one of the founding member of the Chicano theatre group known as Culture Clash.

Bilingual commentary — It Was a Different World: And That’s The Way It Was

by Community Contributor • October 2, 2020 • Comments Off

There once was a time when we Americans didn’t seek shelter in our echo chambers where we soak in the news that corresponds to our world view and ideology. We weren’t a nation of Fox News vs. CNN viewers, scorning each other and inhabiting very different but parallel universes. We didn’t accuse each other of subscribing to conspiracy theories. We didn’t have leaders at the very top rungs of government actively promoting some of the vilest, most unimaginably preposterous and downright quirky fabrications that we hear today, every day, everywhere and all the time.

Letter to the editor — Vote from home

by Community Contributor • September 28, 2020 • Comments Off

The circumstances of this election are like no other in a hundred years. We need to execute our Constitutional right to vote and stay safe from the Covid-19 virus. The best way to do that is to vote from home.

Bilingual commentary — Our Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage

by Community Contributor • September 25, 2020 • Comments Off

Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the greatest classical musicians of all time, composed a musical piece entitled (in translation) “Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Opus 112.” Beethoven was inspired by the eternally stirring poetry of the renowned philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whom he had met and to whom he dedicated this work.

Guest commentary — The Fall of American Democracy and the Rise of White Nationalism and Tyranny: We all saw it Coming!

by Community Contributor • September 24, 2020 • Comments Off

Get Rid of the Ballots…That is what he said, that is what he will do, and who is going to stop him? We are less that 42 days away from the most cataclysmic, potentially apocalyptic, American election in our lifetime. However the election results turn out, approximately half of the American electorate will be enraged, convinced that the election was rigged. The evil tyrannical genius of Trump, is that in less than four years he has been able to consolidate all federal power under his control and in the process is annihilating all semblance of American democracy. Trump with his tyrannical power grab, along with the considerable help of all his well-placed and well-paid henchmen/women, has turned us all into a pathetic nation of cowards, haters, doubters and conspiracy theorists. Make no mistake all of us, by omission or commission, are responsible for the creation of this monster that now occupies the White House.

Guest commentary — Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States of America in 2020

by Community Contributor • September 18, 2020 • Comments Off

If it were not so pathetically packaged as totally absurd, insincere and damaged capitalistic propaganda, of absolutely no consequence or redeeming value whatsoever, for the roughly 18 million Latinos, it would be laughable, cruel, ironic hypocrisy at the highest level. I am referring to this phony period from September 15, to October 15, 2020 that we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States of America. Celebrate what? When this our government has effectively declared war on us, the Latinos of this nation.

Bilingual commentary — Minority Students and STEM Education, Part II

by Community Contributor • September 11, 2020 • Comments Off

Last week I wrote about representatives of minority populations who study STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics in school and emerge into our communities as scientists, teachers, engineers and role models. Within our local community, we have a substantial number of college students majoring in STEM fields. Likewise, we are fairly well represented professionally in math education. I may be a bit biased because of my background, but many of us know, or at least intuit, that mathematics is the gateway to all branches of science and the foundation of areas as diverse as music, logic, business, finance and cryptography.

Bilingual commentary — A September to Remember that Democracy is in Your Hands

by Amigos805.com • September 4, 2020 • Comments Off

Never has a September been more important to American democracy than this year with the deadline approaching to fill out U.S. Census forms and to do everything possible to make sure your vote counts in during the Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020 general election

During the next few weeks we will highlight the need for our reading audience to take action as these deadlines rapidly approach.

Guest commentary — Ivanka’s “Find Something New”

by Community Contributor • August 14, 2020 • Comments Off

Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Trump, serves as a co-chair of the National Council for the American Worker. Several weeks ago, I, like many others, waxed skeptical of Ivanka’s suggestion that Americans laid off from their jobs “find something new” as they are displaced from their livelihoods by the tsunami-strength ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. She was roundly criticized for being the let-them-eat-cake embodiment of Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, who was ultimately executed at the guillotine.

Guest commentary — 2nd Open letter to Scott Whitney, Police Chief of Oxnard

by Community Contributor • August 7, 2020 • Comments Off

Now that the people have defeated the unconstitutional Oxnard Civil “Gang” Injunction (OCGI) what is the next move for the OPD? You, Scott, and all your current staff of Assistant Police Chiefs were with you back in 2003, all as aspiring “by the book” future police chiefs, you guys then were just following orders; when Greg Totten, the Ventura County District Attorney, your boss at the time Police Chief Art Lopez and the Oxnard City Council secretly conspired to create the Oxnard Civil “Gang” Injunction (OCGI) that the people of Oxnard just slayed after 17 years of community and court room fights.

Bilingual commentary — Lessons from the Least Terns

by Community Contributor • July 31, 2020 • Comments Off

This past weekend I had the opportunity to wander around the “settling ponds” by the water treatment plant in Ventura. To the casual outsider, this might sound like the last place on earth to go for a stroll, but it’s really a bit of a hidden treasure in our community.

One of the highlights of this location is the quantity and quality of the bird-watching that is available. I’m learning that birds have much to teach us, and the more I learn about them, the more in awe I am of them.

Guest commentary — The Oxnard Civil Gang Injunction is DEAD! Reconciliation, Healing and Reparation Begins NOW!

by Community Contributor • July 30, 2020 • Comments Off

After 16 years of illegal profiling, harassment and enjoining Mexican youth and adults, the racist and unconstitutional Oxnard Civil “Gang” Injunction is DEAD! Irrational fear, ignorance, and racism created this unconstitutional monster. There is the universal antidote to irrational fear, and racist hate and it is love; and love is at our miraculous and transformative disposal any time we wish to act boldly and put love into action. Oxnard here is where we must act boldly and immediately with love on a local level.

Guest commentary — After 500 years it is Time for All Our History to be Heard and Respected!

by Community Contributor • July 17, 2020 • Comments Off

Last week I wrote an op-ed piece on racism that got quite a lot of circulation in the local electronic media. I want to lend some nuance to the often ugly race relations in American. I also wanted to give the reader a 62 year historical perspective through a few of my personal and traumatic race relation experiences I had in America. The negative comments from readers came fast and furiously as expected. Some of the exasperated readers wrote the usual racist advice and complaints, “get over it…stop whining…your comments are toxic…America belongs to white people…MAGA” and the old standard bile “If you don’t love this country then go back to Mexico”, but I also got positive feedback like, ”you should write a book… and the one that keeps me writing and helps me take on all the slings and arrows from the haters was, “you have to keep writing to tell our history.”

And then I read Caroline Randall Williams’s profound, painful and poignant article, My Body Is A Confederate Monument, in the New York Times and I was moved to tears and a solemn recommitment to speak truth to power as inspired by her searing and eloquent truth.

Bilingual commentary — Racism in Oxnard’s Past, Part I

by Community Contributor • July 10, 2020 • Comments Off

Some of us who are “old enough” remember when racism was so prevalent and “accepted” that it seemed to permeate the very air that we breathed. It surrounded us. Just as a fish doesn’t think about breathing underwater, and a bird thinks that flying is “no big deal,” many of us growing up in the 50s and 60s were vaccinated against the guilt that would shame us today.

Guest commentary — Throwing the Proverbial Bones to the Mongrel Dogs

by Community Contributor • July 10, 2020 • Comments Off

American racism is complex, insidious and multi-layered. It is not a just black or white phenomenon. Our American racism comes in many shades of color and degrees of ignorance, contempt, stupidity and hatred. This brings me to the current seldom talked about or completely ignored ongoing racist beef/pedo between some Brown and Black folks in this country and in California, in particular.

Letter to the Editor — In Solidarity

by Community Contributor • June 25, 2020 • Comments Off

The month of June 2020 will end in historical landmark victories for our LBGTQ+ and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) communities. The Association of Mexican American Educators, Inc., Oxnard Chapter, applauds our Supreme Court Justices for supporting these communities and future generations.

Bilingual commentary — African Americans and the Reconstruction Era

by Community Contributor • June 25, 2020 • Comments Off

We live in a great country with a history that is both magnificent and, at times, not so magnificent. Until very recently, we were the light of the world, the “shining city upon a hill,” as our country has been called in flights of oratory throughout modern history. Nonetheless, there have been several ugly periods of time in American history that should have us hanging our heads in shame: the massacres of Native Americans in the nineteenth century; the internment of Japanese Americans in the mid-1940s; the persecution and humiliation of Mexican American youth in Los Angeles by military servicemen and white Angelenos during World War II. Few of us are aware of the Reconstruction era, just after the Civil War when the black slaves were given their freedom. In school, many of us were taught that the slaves were freed and we went on to become a great industrial power. And we lived happily ever after. But the truth is otherwise.

Guest commentary — On this Father’s Day our Mother Earth Weeps!

by Community Contributor • June 19, 2020 • Comments Off

Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. Armando Vazquez. Courtesy photo. By…

Bilingual report — A message from County of Ventura CEO Mike Powers

by Community Contributor • June 12, 2020 • Comments Off

We all watched in horror as Mr. George Floyd was killed by a Minnesota police officer, it is incumbent upon us to recognize the pain and the outrage of this injustice. Each time one of these needless and tragic events happens, it seems we all pledge and hope it will get better. And then this happens again. We have reached a tipping point from which we can never go back. My heart is with the family of Mr. Floyd, with the African American community and with all members of our community who are hurting, feeling hopeless, and afraid.

It is time we seize this moment and work to stop these events from happening. Together, as a community we can and will do it. We must do more. It starts with having an open and honest dialogue with one another. We value our relationships with our community members and community groups. We are stronger together. We stand in solidarity with those who wish to ensure all have a sense of safety, belonging, justice, equity and peace regardless of race, gender, age, sexuality or other identities.

Bilingual commentary — The Pervasiveness of “White Privilege”

by Community Contributor • June 11, 2020 • Comments Off

At this time, once again, we find ourselves discussing the unfortunate reality of “white privilege” in our unspoken, pernicious societal rules. “White privilege” is that social construct that makes it easier for whites to work within the grand system, to manipulate it in their favor if they choose to do so, to benefit from the blessings of a social order without even trying, simply by virtue of the color of their skin. Whites often are not even conscious of the privileges extended to them at the expense of non-whites. Whites can almost be forgiven for being unaware—indeed, clueless—of the generational suffering of those who do not participate in the grace that flows from the fountain of privilege.

Guest commentary — No Justice! No Peace!

by Community Contributor • June 5, 2020 • Comments Off

Bilingual commentary: Reinventing Our Lives

by Community Contributor • May 7, 2020 • Comments Off

We are not alone. One way or another, the coronavirus has upended the life of practically every individual in the world. As a country, we confront this threat and look for ways to assuage the severe damage that it is inflicting on our livelihoods, our lifestyles, our relationships and the global economy. Meanwhile, we are all observing an intense tug-of-war between the forces that agitate for a brisk re-opening of the country and those that caution us about the potentially dreadful consequences of a rapid return to a “normal life.” Achieving an optimal response is one of the most fraught challenges ever experienced by at least the past three generations, so achieving an optimal balance is guaranteed to be painful.

RSVP to Conejo Dems Coffee on Zoom meeting on May 2

by Community Contributor • May 1, 2020 • Comments Off

Apologies for the late notice. Please click the link below to sign up for tomorrows (Sat) coffee. Looking forward to seeing everyone there. Below is a link to help you chose the right background for you. Also, I have include a cool link we spoke about last week – “View from my Window”.

Bilingual commentary: Passing the Time

by Community Contributor • April 30, 2020 • Comments Off

Some fortunate souls are able to work from home during this pandemic, which seems to have no end. If some of the more pessimistic health experts are right, it just may not.

On the other hand, there are many of us who don’t have the luxury of working from home. We may be a service provider whose livelihood was suddenly yanked away. We might be in the retail industry, which in some quarters is struggling to breathe and may not survive an environment that is essentially hostile to its products (think clothing and fashion) or to sales in general (for traditional summer fun, back-to-school, Black Friday and Christmas), which are completely unpredictable at this time.

Bilingual commentary: Are We Being Forced Online?

by Community Contributor • April 23, 2020 • Comments Off

For my two older grandsons, living and playing online is nothing novel, even in the face of this “novel” coronavirus. Several years ago, I saw them playing high-stakes games (in their minds, at least) in cyberspace using their headphones, microphones and X-boxes. Sometimes they would play with their cousins on the other side of town, and sometimes with strangers—somewhere in the world. They are not living in the world in which I grew up, where tournaments of paramount importance for us at the time consisted primarily of physical board games such as checkers, chess, Parcheesi, Scrabble and Monopoly.

Commentary: A quiet resistance to light our way

by Amigos805.com • April 22, 2020 • Comments Off

Resistance. Quiet, persistent resistance.

Every once in a while, that resistance comes to everyone and everything.

As we note Earth Day this week, we are reminded of that resistance. In our stay-safe-at-home times, we are now seeing a world where the air is cleaner, the sound of nature is clearer and the Earth is actually healing itself a little at a time. There is a chilling, yet quiet beauty seeing the streets of Paris, London, Rome and New York virtually empty and nature going on quite well without us.

It’s as if Earth finally said, “ENOUGH.”

Bilingual commentary: A Nudge toward Life Online

by Community Contributor • April 16, 2020 • Comments Off

There seems to be only one thing on our minds right now—everything related to the coronavirus.

As a result of the social and economic upheaval of the past few weeks, one of the biggest changes that many of us are making is learning to adapt to an online environment.

Bilingual commentary: Tough Lesson about ‘Flow’

by Community Contributor • April 9, 2020 • Comments Off

Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes local guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805. David Magallanes By David…

Bilingual report: Vulnerable Artists in the Age of Coronavirus

by Community Contributor • April 2, 2020 • Comments Off

Optimism’s Impact On Mind And Body During COVID-19 Crisis

by Community Contributor • March 25, 2020 • Comments Off

CAMARILLO — It’s been less than a week since California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a “stay at home” mandate for the almost 40 million residents in the state. The realization that our social and work lives have dramatically changed from…

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