Tag: Armando Vazquez

Guest commentary — An Immigrant Tale in the Time of Trump*

by Community Contributor • February 7, 2025 • Comments Off

Our three-alarm opera begins very early in our house each morning. First, Lady Whiskers, our huge Coon cat, meows politely, already in front of the bedroom door telling us quite empathically that she is ready to go into the darkness of the morning and begin her early dawn hunt. Our puppy, Maximiliano (Mad Max), hearing his sister, begins crying for attention and some warm milk. Half an hour later our family alarm goes off, all the while classical music is mesmerizingly reminding us to be mindful, trucha, and cool for the battles that lay ahead. This how we had begun our morning wakeup ritual for a while, until Trump ascended to the Monarchy of the United States roughly three weeks ago, and completely highjacked, assaulted, and disrupted our world.

Guest commentary — The Chicano Art Movimiento

by Community Contributor • October 11, 2024 • 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. By Armando Vazquez , M.Ed. / Guest…

Guest commentary — Reflections On My Life In The Chicano Art Movimiento: The Latest Chapter

by Community Contributor • November 17, 2023 • Comments Off

This is the latest revision to this article that I wrote more than ten years ago. The article got tremendous response from unexpected sources like Wikipedia, LULAC national. The article, even received some academic attention when it was first published by our dear friends at Amigos805, the electronic newsletter owned and operated by our dear friend Frank Moraga. I wanted to share this recently revised, updated, and expanded article with updated and new information, with all of friends, both old new, to remind all of that Chicano art movement is fluid, incredibly creative, and ever changing. I guess I will be revising and adding on to this article until I die or it becomes a book, y adelante

Guests commentary — Standing and Working On the Shoulders of Giants

by Community Contributor • November 9, 2023 • Comments Off

“This passionate dedication to collect the artists’ stories and try to preserve their works is a love mission for me.” — Armando Vazquez

As a child growing up dirt poor in Mexico I was raised by mostly women, my mother, my two beloved curandera abuelitas; Madre Elvira and Chavelita, along with four overly protective older sisters. Even as a kid I was amazed by the level of cooperation, love and support that they gave to one another each and every day. The matriarchs of the family knew if they were to survive, while their husbands, sons and other male relatives where toiling in the fields of El Norte, they had to work and live their lives in harmony and communion with one another, to fend off the ever present and real possibility of starvation and disease, along with all the horrors that poor, illiterate india “viudas” faced every day in our small village of Ahualulco. And so, they did, I was surrounded by love and affection my entire childhood. These Mexican women, the women of my family, were the original giants in life. These guerilleras in large part molded the man I am today. Mi madre sagrada and my godly abuelitas are now dead, but they are always in my thoughts and my prayers. God, I miss them.

I have written extensively about my family, both women and men, it is my way of keeping their lives, their history, and contribution to our family alive. It is my way of honoring their memory and keeping it fresh in my mind and heart. In writing about my family, I began to also think about other men and women that have come into my life and whose lives, struggles, and accomplishment have had a tremendous influence on my life.

Guest commentary — Fathers day miracle — ‘Dad, I Feel Like I am Cured!’

by Community Contributor • June 16, 2023 • Comments Off

“Dad, I feel like I am cured!” Those were the words that my son, Aaron, said to me, this past Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 11:16 AM. In my wildest dreams and nightmares, I was not remotely prepared for this miraculous news. My mind, heart, my entire world froze temporarily. I was left speechless and breathless. I was catapulted to an unknown realm between ecstasy and terror. Then I saw the loving faces of my jefitos and our sacred elders and I was finally able to breathe. It took some eternally long seconds to finally wrap my head around what my son was telling me. Aaron repeated again, “Dad, I believe that I am cured!” I move the phone away from my month, and as quietly as I possibly could I tried to control myself, and I silently wailed thanks and praises to the spirits over these four little miraculous words that my family and close friends have been praying and waiting to hear from Aaron for these past 18 years.

Bilingual commentary — The Trouble With Words

by Community Contributor • March 24, 2023 • Comments Off

I love words. I am a writer. I believe I understand the power of words. The hermit that coined that moronic phrase, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt!’ probably survived in a pitch-black cave isolated from all humanity. Words, as we all know that live in this chaotic and troublesome world, can start insurrections, wars, the collapse of nations, and they may even send a corrupt, immoral and evil ex-presidents to jail. On a personal level mean, abusive and cruel words are like a million vicious paper cuts that will inevitably destroy the intended target. On the flip side loving, kind and affirmative words can help heal the most broken soul, and give hope to a people, and perhaps save a nation and the world.

Bilingual commentary — Another Dispatch from the Mysterious and Insidious Covid-19 and Long-Covid Wars

by Community Contributor • March 10, 2023 • Comments Off

This a cautionary tale and for now I am still alive! I thank with eternal gratitude my family, my God, and my ancestral Spirits for their continued blessing, guidance, and loving support. Gracias jefitos for the hardheadedness that you blessed me with. This virus from hell will not kill me (not yet, anyway). This narrative, then, is a personal account, it does not present any “expert” or scientific evidence to support or refute any claims. I write to document my trials and tribulation with the Covid-19 and the Long-Covid virus. And to share and perhaps provide firsthand information and hope to the public, especially those poor folks suffering from the many complications that have come to be associated with this horrific illness.

Guest commentary — On Power, Pendejismo, Race and Throwing the Proverbial Crumbs to the Mongrel Dogs

by Community Contributor • October 21, 2022 • Comments Off

… “We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load.”… Malcom X

… Racism as American as Apple Pie

But, pathetically, we do attack one another. Always, it seems, fighting for the proverbial crumbs that the oppressor throws at our feet. Latino and Black folk in this country have had a troubled and checkered history when it comes to, as Rodney King implored, “to just get along”. American racism is complex, insidious, multi-layered and has been “as American as apple pie” and an evil and shameful scourge on this nation for 250 years. Racism permeates and infects every aspect of American life. No one is totally inoculated and immune from this highly infectious American pathology, Latinos and Blacks are no exception.

Guest commentary — Can United States Democracy Survive the Big Lie?

by Community Contributor • September 22, 2022 • Comments Off

The late great poet, activist and musical genius Gil Scott-Heron, often reminds folks through his work that, “America has always lead the world in selective amnesia and hypocrisy” How can any honest, common sense thinking American disagree? But alas, we Americans are often a hard-headed, selfish, greedy and stupid people in full display of an incredulous world, some watch nervously others cheering madly, as Trump and his MAGA cult push our nation further toward the abyss of totalitarianism.

So to me, the short and long answer to whether will America survive the big lie is as scary as it is obvious. Of course, the United States of America will survive; it may even continue to flourish if and when Trump and his MAGA fellow fascists take over. After all what is more dangerous and entrenched than an army of MAGA/QAnon zealots that have collectively drank the orange Kool-Aid and believe to the marrow of their soul that the country that they ruled for over 245 years is being “stolen from them by the godless hordes of Mexicans, Blacks and other undesirables heathens.”

Guest commentary — My Covid Story: My descent into Hell and back (by the grace of the Spirit)

by Community Contributor • September 1, 2022 • Comments Off

The murky blinding white lights of eternity:

It was touch and go for a couple weeks with me and my recent bout of Covid. In my worst feverish bouts of acute pain, hallucination and delirium a couple of times I swear I saw those murky blinding white lights of eternity. In the past three years we had been one of the real lucky families in this country. We had been dodging and miraculously avoided get infected with Covid. We had done everything scientifically and deliberately possible to stay away from the deadly disease. I have a chronic, pervasive, and serious auto immune defect in my nervous system that seems to have been passed on to all my children. We are a super high risk family, so we made a very conscience decision to isolate from everyone and everything.

Guest Commentary — Carmen Ramirez: An American Icon

by Community Contributor • August 18, 2022 • Comments Off

The death of Carmen Ramirez: The tragic death this week of our dear friend, Carmen Ramirez has left many in the city of Oxnard, the county of Ventura, the state of California, the nation, and throughout world in pain, sorrow and shock. That’s how much this Chicano guerillera meant to all of us that knew her, worked with her, loved and admired her. Dr. Debbie DeVries, one of Carmen’s closest friends, speaking through the shock, the acute pain, and mental fog of the moment remarked to me that, “Carmen was the most caring, selfless, mindful, loving and kind person I have ever had the honor of knowing and working with. Carmen never made decisions based on political or personal self-interest aggrandizement.”

Guest commentary — Lady Whiskers and the Miracle of Christmas

by Community Contributor • January 2, 2022 • Comments Off

Roughly four Christmas ago Debbie and I where unceremoniously run out of Oxnard. We had lost our lease at the Café on A location that we had occupied and provided programs and services to at-promise youth and their families for three decades. No matter how much we “negotiated” with the landlords and the Oxnard City Manager at the time, they were determined to kick us out. They told us impatiently and obliquely that they had other plans. Yesterday, I returned to Oxnard, the pain of the eviction, almost gone. I bravely drove down the old part of downtown Oxnard, on to A Street. What has replaced our beloved Café on A is a smoke shop, soon I suspected they will sell cannabis products out the location. The irony of this building tenant change makes me both want to laugh and cry, all at the same time!

Guest commentary — Despieto (Woke) and Seeing in Aztlan

by Community Contributor • November 19, 2021 • Comments Off

In Journey to Ixtlan, by Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan explains to Carlos, that after more than a decade, of “ordinary exploration” he is on the precipice of stopping the world and seeing for the first time, “You have simply stopped the world…Yesterday the world became as sorcerers tell you it is, in this world coyotes talk and so do deer, as I once told you, so do rattlesnakes and trees and all other living being. But what I want you to learn is seeing. Perhaps you know now that seeing happens when one sneaks between the worlds, the worlds of ordinary people and the world of sorcerers.”

Guest commentary — The Artist in Retirement

by Community Contributor • November 12, 2021 • Comments Off

I hate it. I hate it when folks start talking to me about “retirement”. I detest that word. It is euphuism for ‘OK you old fart go away and die, and make it quick. You and your sorry useless ass is costing us; everyone, the hood, the country, the world. And most of all the family, their valuable time, resources and most especially their hard earned money. The precious money that we just don’t have to waste on you wretched and demented carcass. So be done with it quick, retire and die!’

But they won’t let it go. I’ll be gone soon enough! When I insists that if I stop what I love doing that I will die. They will tell me ‘stop it anyway. You know that it has always annoyed us, your stupid and indulgent artista pendejadas’. That is the point I say, art keeps me alive. Loco pendejo! They respond, enraged that I am so broke, slow witted and not quite dead, yet I continue to try to create. Yeah, moron we want you to die. We never knew what the hell you were doing anyway. And now all you are is old, stubborn, and forgetful. Always into your stupid writings that no one reads. No one cares old man, and you have not made one penny from your ‘art’. Never, not a single penny, ever from your art!

Guest commentary — 21st Century Community Safety Requires Love and a Rigorous Ethnically and Culturally Congruent Mental Health Component

by Community Contributor • May 7, 2021 • Comments Off

At the Keys to Empower You in the System (KEYS) Leadership Academy, which was housed at the Café on A, Oxnard, we believed that the best community safety is where all adults, young adults, kids and everyone else in Oxnard (all the cities of this nation) feels a real sense of civic involvement and transparency, responsibility of ownership, peace, love and respect. We know full well that safety is mostly perceptual, thus any community safety program must incorporate a rigorous mental health and wellness component. We have relied much too long on “traditional policing” alone to bring us safety. As a sobering reminder, let us not forget that Oxnard is yearly designated by highly reputable demographers as one of the safest cities in the country for it size in the entire nation.

Yet, we have often let others assign us the “bum rap” about “crime riddled Oxnard”.

Open Letter to our Justice and Police Reform Movements Friends and Supporters

by Community Contributor • April 29, 2021 • Comments Off

Dear Sisters and Brothers in the Police Reform and Social Justice Movement,

We pray that you dear folks are well. We send you all our love, peace and happiness. It has been a long while since we have enjoyed each other wonderful company. So as I reach out, perhaps in an untimely and out of the blue manner, please be sure that we understand the hardship of the times and if replying to this note is difficult or impossible at this trying time, of course, we understand. You can contact me at: ava1040@yahoo.com

That being said I, I am sure you folks as well, have anguished over all of the mayhem, and killings that are being levelled upon our sisters and brothers of color throughout this nation by the police. And we are left with a feeling, almost always, of total impotence because we feel powerless to do anything about the deadly cop violence or reforming the police. I have been filled with an impotent sense of dread and paralysis too!

Then something happened to me just very recently that made me re-think this police reform conundrum and I do not feel so hopelessly impotent now. I have a vision, not an original vision, to be sure, but a clear vision nonetheless, sparked by what I thought was an innocuous effort on my part to reach out to my justice and police reform brethren in this time of acute pain and suffering.

Guest commentary — The Obsolete American Police Model Must Be Abolished — Now

by Community Contributor • April 23, 2021 • Comments Off

The genesis and perpetuation of the monstrous, murderous, and maligent powers of the police in America is a 245 year work in progress in the consolidation of absolute police/military power and control in communities of color throughout this nation We cannot erase, forget or ignore the past 500 years of police/military oppression by the police/military in our communities. Likewise we cannot wait another day to begin the systemic demolition and destruction of the current police/military model that currently operates with deadly racist impunity in this country. In Oxnard, and throughout the nation, the community must take over the management and supervision of its police department.

The first crucial and mandatory step toward real and progressive 21st-century police reform in Oxnard is the community taking over the vital role of departmental management and policy administration of the Oxnard Police Department (OPD). The initial step is not about defunding the cops, because it deflects and detracts from the number one problem that every police department in the nation has, including the OPD, which is cops supervising cops! For 100+ years the Oxnard City Council and by silent complicit acquiescence of the residents, we have let the “foxes” patrol with unfettered power, control, and impunity the community’s “chicken coop”. How has that worked out, for people of color, the homeless, the disenfranchised, the immigrant, and the youth, Oxnard?

Guest commentary — Stardust

by Community Contributor • April 2, 2021 • Comments Off

There once was born a magical and loving child, a golden boy! He was stardust that had travelled many light-years through the deepest, darkest and furthest expanses of the universe. In fact this stardust had travel for more than 15 light years or about 90 trillion miles to reach one desperately longing young woman, who wanted nothing more in her life than to be a mother. An army of doctors had told her that it would never, ever, happen, she was sterile. Impossible to become pregnant they told her, yet she never stopped praying to an unknown God that she had rejected all of her life. Why was she praying now? It was as though the closer the golden star dust travelled across the universe toward the woman the more she felt mysteriously compelled to pray.

And then one day behold the miraculous stardust had taken embryonic form, and the woman was pregnant. …

Guest contribution — Open letter to Ventura County, 5th District Supervisor Carmen Ramirez and Oxnard Mayor John Zaragoza

by Community Contributor • January 14, 2021 • Comments Off

Congratulation to both of you on your historic victories in this past 2020 Presidential Elections. These are uniquely troubling times and difficult for the nation, the county, and the city of Oxnard. You two where overwhelmingly voted into office because the electorate believes in you. We believe that you two working together can break some of the horrific self-serving and polarizing gridlock of local and national politics as usual, that benefit only the very few 1% well-heeled politically and financially hooked up, along with tragically half of the nation (along with the county of Ventura, the city of Oxnard) that will continue to blindly follow the evil and maniacal dog whistles of racism, hatred, and fear straight to the tyrannical abyss.

You two, Carmen and John, working together can be a working and thriving model of local common sense, cooperative governance, democratic inclusion, fiscally compassionate (put tax money where it is most needed and not with sweet heart lobbyist), wise decision making and social justice champions and become true democratic beacon for the nation of all.

In 2021 the blessings of Unconditional love For all

by Community Contributor • January 8, 2021 • Comments Off

Unconditional love is not so much about how we tolerate and endure each other, but rather how we welcome and embrace each other, no matter the circumstances.

Unconditional love is about how we promise ourselves to never under any conditions stop bring the flawed and humble truth of who we are to each other.

Guest commentary — A 2021 Immigrant Story, for the New Year, for this Nation, for the World…

by Community Contributor • December 31, 2020 • Comments Off

Millions of us immigrants flee from countries from all over the world because tyrannical leaders routinely and viciously abused democratic principles, it seemed, at every turn. Many of the world’s immigrants attempt to come to this country seeking refuge, asylum and protection.

Guest commentary — On love, gratitude at year’s end

by Community Contributor • December 23, 2020 • Comments Off

I am an immigrant and I thank the Great Spirit that I am alive today. To be able to celebrate the holidays and 2020 years end, with my family, my loved ones, and friends. Even in this terribly painful, agonizing and deadly year of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am committed to the “good trouble” revolutionary struggle with faith, eternal gratitude and love cautiously navigating adelante into the coming New Year.

I am a 70 year old Chicano who has weathered and been humbled by the long twisted, unpredictable, sometimes euphoric, and at times wicked turn of my life’s trajectory. I am eternally grateful for both the velvet kisses and the many ass kicking that I have received in revolutionary service to my community! I do not want to die, just yet, I have a lot to contribute. But if the time comes for me to return to celestial star dust, I’m cool. While I have breath in my lungs and love in heart life here are some of the things that I am especially grateful for.

Guest commentary — Covid-19 in America, where do we go from here?

by Community Contributor • December 18, 2020 • Comments Off

Out of Nowhere, Disease, Death and Dread: At the start of the year no one knew what the Corona virus was, by the end of 2020 there is no one left in the world that does not know what COVID-19 virus is, and had not been devastated by its relentless and deadly onslaught. This day Monday, December 14, 2020 the United States death toll from the covid-19 virus topped 300,000 and worldwide the death count has moved pasted 1.62 million souls that have succumb to this deadly virus that has infected the entire world, with no let-up into the foreseeable future. It seems that everyone in this country, indeed throughout the world, in some painful way knows of someone close that has died or suffered horribly from complications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Guest commentary — Amazon is Coming to Oxnard: Please Don’t Shoot the Messenger!

by Community Contributor • December 14, 2020 • Comments Off

Amazon takes on the World: The creation of Amazon, in 1994, by Jeff Bezos, is by any standard an incredible American entrepreneurial success story. …We, the 1,500 workforce and community, were excluded from the initial bargaining and negotiation process, we will not be excluded from future workforce deliberations and collective bargaining actions that will assure the protection, the health and safety of the workers, their family and the entire greater Oxnard area. “We are excited to join the (Oxnard) community” is the way Andre Almeida, Regional Director of Amazon Operations, put it. The community of Oxnard is also excited about the new business partnership, but we will also be vigilant and support our local workforce to make sure that Amazon in Oxnard gives as much to the community as it takes!

Guest commentary — Oxnard Must have a Special Election, and not permit the City Council to appoint a ‘Puppet’!

by Community Contributor • December 10, 2020 • Comments Off

…We have work too hard and long for district wide city council representation by and for the people. As I write this piece the City Council is deciding whether to appoint a new city council member to the seat that will be vacated on January 4, 2021, by Carmen Ramirez as she takes her new position as the Ventura County Supervisor of the 5th District. Or instead have a special election and have the voters of that district decide. An appointment by the city council of a favored “son or daughter” is highly problematic and will come with the inevitable strings attached. That appointee will be beholden to the political powers that put her/him in office.

Guest commentary — On Immigration (Migration), Genocide, Remembrance, Atonement and Reparation to the African-American and Indigenous Nations of America

by Community Contributor • November 26, 2020 • Comments Off

Approximately 30,000 years ago our early ancestors began migrating crossed the Bering Straits. Between 15,000 to 20,000 years ago these first migrants continued their long journey into what is now known as the Americas. We the Indigenous of the “Americas” are the progeny of these first migrant. In the ensuing 15,000 years our Indigenous ancestors would continue their migration from what is now known as the North Pole all the ways south to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

Bilingual commentary — Yesterday I was Bold and Clever, So I Wanted to Change the World; Year of Age, I Am Still Seeking Wisdom So I Can Change Myself

by Community Contributor • November 19, 2020 • Comments Off

Today at 70

Guest commentary — The Crucial Latino Vote Helped Elect Biden

by Community Contributor • November 13, 2020 • Comments Off

The American people have driven the mad tyrant out of the White House, long live Democracy! The last four years have been the most polarizing, uncertain, and painful years in our lifetime, nonetheless, we got the job done we have a new president. Without doubt Biden would not be the president-elect if Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and the young folks vote had not come to the rescue of the Democratic Party again. 19 million Latinos voted in this Presidential Election, more than 13million or roughly 67% of the Latino votes went to Biden. The first time in American history that the Latino vote represented the highest minority vote in the nation. The powerful and decisive Latino voting pattern will continue to grow in the coming years. Both the Democrats and the Republican are aware of this growing American electorate, and we will no longer will be appeased, marginalized, manipulated or simply be ignored. Biden know this better than most, and he must act accordingly! We will closely watch Biden not in what he says but in what he does.

Guest commentary — What I Learned About America as a Poll Worker in the 2020 Elections

by Community Contributor • November 6, 2020 • Comments Off

I volunteered to be a poll worker in the Santa Maria area of Santa Barbara County for the presidential election of 2020. I was assigned to work at Orcutt Junior High School, in the small agricultural city of Orcutt, here is what I learned. …At the end of the final night of poll work, I walked out to my car with a big smile on my face, with the satisfaction of knowing that I had just participated in a very important and sacred part of our American electoral process. And that our team had done a wonderfully honest, transparent, inclusive, and patriotic job.

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!

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.

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.

Guest Commentary — Which Way America, Democracy or Tyranny?

by Community Contributor • October 2, 2020 • Comments Off

I am a Mexican immigrants, who along with my entire family, I entered into the United States in 1958. I became a naturalized citizen of this country in 1997. The very first time I was eligible to vote, I voted, and I have been voting in local and national election ever since. All immigrants, no matter what part of the world we come from cherish our American citizenship. Not all of us however vote and that is a shame because some of us still think that our one vote does not matter. Our singular vote won’t make a damn bit of difference, and that my dear reader is how we got into some of this mess in the first place. So come November 3, 2020 vote, your VOTE matters!

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.

Guest commentary — The Chicano Moratorium: A 50 Year Struggle Continues*

by Community Contributor • August 28, 2020 • Comments Off

The Chicano Moratorium March of August 29, 1970, in East Los Angeles, that was organized by Chicano anti-war activists, students from throughout the greater Southwest, the Brown Beret and various Chicano civil rights groups and organizations, drew over 30,000 peaceful marchers protesting their opposition to the Vietnam War, police brutality, and incessant universal discrimination and inequality for minorities, culminating that day in a murderous state-sanctioned law enforcement (the Los Angeles Sheriffs for the most part, with some LAPD reinforcements) riot.

For many of us actively involved in the Chicano Movimiento the Moratorium was/is a bloody and murderous reminder that the deadly and oppressive force of the state would come down hard and furious on any minority, individual or group, that in any way challenged their societal dominance and superiority.

Guest commentary — The Latino Art Museum of Oxnard — Now is the Time

by Community Contributor • August 21, 2020 • Comments Off

So artistically and culturally, the questions are, where, how and with whom do we go from here Oxnard? In the past 10 years the city of Oxnard has lost the Children’s Gull Museum, the Carnegie Museum, and the Acuna Art Gallery & Cultural Center. For all intent and purposes the Oxnard Performing Arts Center (PAC) is on life support and probably won’t live past this year. Where do the creative, transformative artistic souls, hearts, and minds germinate, grow and prosper in this art and cultural wasteland that is Oxnard today?

Guest commentary — Oxnard this is no way to run a prosperous, safe and caring city!

by Community Contributor • August 13, 2020 • Comments Off

Since about 2000 until this year, 2020, a total of twenty years, the city of Oxnard has had a top level executive dysfunctional, wasteful, costly and head-spinning management turnover rate. This hair on fire musical chairs approach to local governance, of course, contributes to horrific and untimely fiscal, planning and programmatic waste, malfeasance and mismanagement.

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.

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.

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.

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

by Community Contributor • June 19, 2020 • Comments Off

Guest commentary — Open Letter to Scott Whitney, Chief of the Oxnard Police Department

by Community Contributor • June 12, 2020 • Comments Off

Hello Scott,

It has been a while since we last talked or met. I think the last time we talked was at the old Social Security building, a few times in the past two years when you announced to us (CORE) and other community organizations and leaders your intentions to revising the two original Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions (OCGI). You law enforcement folks saw the adverse decisions being render by courts up and down California that much of the language of the ill-conceived and hastily drafted Civil Gang Injunctions in California were being challenged, and upon judicial review were not passing judicial muster and where in eminent danger of being struck down and rendered unconstitutional. Under your leadership the OPD, and the Ventura County District Attorney’s Offices, saw the writing on the wall and decided to drastically rewrite and modify significant language of the original OCGI.

Chiques Organizing for Rights and Equality (CORE) has been fighting for the abolishment of both the Colonia and Southside Oxnard Civil Gang Injunctions since their inception in 2003-2004 on the simple grounds that they are racist, profile a specific class of Oxnard residents (Latino men) and are outright unconstitutional, not to mention horrifically written and ambiguous ordinances. ABOLISH THE TWO OCGI NOW!!!!

Guest commentary — No Justice! No Peace!

by Community Contributor • June 5, 2020 • Comments Off

Guest commentary: Xavier Montes (Big X): In Requiem

by Community Contributor • February 14, 2020 • Comments Off

On the shoulders of this giant Chicano Artist sigimos adelante! 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…