A Final Blog… About My Blogs?

A Final Blog… About My Blogs?

There is a famous French Poet by the name of Charles Pierre Péguy, in whose writings I’ve found myself to be very much a reflection in the mirror of his work.

It is said that his words were so powerfully influential that his mere writings sent men to war in the 1914’s. Yet he was not merely a literary activist. And in backing the profound words that he wrote – his actions would ultimately cost him his life.

Péguy enlisted to fight in World War I and he was subsequently killed while leading his men on the battlefield during the Battle of the Marne on September 5^th, 1914.

However, his words are alive and ring as true to this writer today, nearly 100 years after his death, as I’m sure they rang true to those men who followed him into battle – to their own deaths.

“Freedom is a system based on courage…” ~ Péguy

I wonder who amongst us these days truly feels free.

But even more importantly, who amongst us has the courage to speak up and to speak out against the systems that are failing us, even worse, failing the next generation in ways previous generations were never failed.

When I write these weekly blogs – I am always eager to see who will step up to the literary podium (comments section) and voice their opinions.

Good or bad, different or indifferent, in total agreement or total disagreement – I just want to read the peoples concerns.

Unfortunately what I find every week is zero comments, one comment, two comments (if one is mine), and on a really, really good week – three comments, again, if one is my own.

“A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket...” ~ Péguy

How prophetic.

For those of you who’ve read my work – you’d certainly understand that my words are being pulled one at a time from the very depths of my gut… I don’t know how to write any other way – nor would I ever care to.

However, these days I’m wondering if it’s even worth the pain of withdrawing these throbbing truths from my soul only to end up with zero comments at the end of the week.

Confession: writing these blogs takes a heavy toll on me emotionally and physically.

Do you think it’s easy week after week to do research on topics destroying this country from the financially difficulties of our generation in Die Peasant… Die, in which I wrote, “We were losing our lives, our jobs, our homes, our pension plans and life savings, while at the same time making the richest people in America 700 Billion dollars wealthier. What a sweet deal for them, huh?” (2 Comments).

Or when I wrote about how far behind minorities are in the race for a better education in The Art of the Question, in which I wrote, “The indigenous people were no better than roaming packs of wolves looking for their next meal and they seemed to prefer white meat… The Puerto Rican Nationalists were terrorists. Shit, kind of looks like CNN today showing us how all Mexican’s looking for a better tomorrow are “illegal’s” and “aliens” at the same time…” (2 Comments – 1 mine).

What about a few weeks back when I wrote about our teenagers killing themselves (The Virtual Life of a Teen) via My Space beefs, a trend that has carried over to Facebook and Twitter, when I wrote, “Honestly, it isn’t easy to shock me… But the realization that one of his closest friends had been murdered over ‘tough talk’ on My Space, and the sad fact that he held him as he took his last breath, was enough to reduce me to tears of anger as he cried and told me the story of watching his friend die over nothing…” (3 Comments – 1 mine).

All very heavy topics from week to week which have also included random gun violence, the growing gang problems in our communities, the always hot religious debate and many others…

But the one that has me ready to hang up my keyboard and quit blogging is my last blog, which garnered “zero” comments.

It was “An Open Letter to Ruben Diaz Jr.,” in which I wrote, “So why then does Diaz Jr. merely release another copy and pasted version of his last press release during the previous bloody weekend and promise to meet with two people who have absolutely no damn idea how to fix the issues in OUR communities?” (0 Comments)

And true to my words, the NYPD – I’m assuming with some input from Diaz Jr., did nothing other than flood certain blocks in the Bronx with more Gestapo’s, foot soldiers, otherwise known at the NYPD prepared to harass 93% of the good people in ours neighborhoods to find the 7% they say are causing all the harm. Sounds fair right?

I want you all to understand sincerely that your silence does nothing for any cause…

I want you to understand that when you read one of my blogs and shake your head in disgust – that your reaction must be backed up with an action…

In this case, I’m not yet asking any of you to walk into battle with me and die in the trenches as Péguy and his men did in 1914.

But I am asking you to voice your objections in the comments section of the blog spot – not Facebook – to let the world know that you have the courage to stand up behind your words. That you can’t be silenced – that your words will eventually lead you to the truest definition of freedom.

I imagined someone forwarding the link of my last blog to Ruben Diaz Jr., in which I not only spoke about the problems plaguing this borough of the Bronx, but in which I spoke to solutions and actually left my real phone number in an effort to offer support and assistance…

And I imagined him upset as he read my words such as, “Does it make sense to anyone other than me that we need to reach EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE if we’re ever going to stand a chance in turning this thing around…”

Or when I went on to write, “And so sick of our elected officials, those I’ve supported, like Ruben Diaz Jr., not standing up and saying, “Come sit at the table with me… and let’s figure this out…”

I now believe Diaz Jr. would’ve reached the end of the blog in a bit of shock… Only to find out that there were “zero” comments to back up anything I wrote about – Thus giving him the false assumption that all of his constituents must be perfectly happy with what he’s doing to stop violence in the borough.

Next I imagined a huge smile run across his face as he sat back in his chair assured that the voices of the peasants will forever fall silent…

And then I grew angry and sick to my stomach that we truly have no voice, for a quiet objector is no objector at all…

Péguy understood this even 100 years ago when he wrote, “We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see…”

If I’m alone in this fight, please let me know so I can silence my pen, for I no longer want to see what the rest of you don’t care to see.

Perhaps this blog shall go blind as well… and be silenced for a time…

Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

An Open Letter to Ruben Diaz Jr.

An Open Letter to Ruben Diaz Jr.

News Flash: If you live in any ghetto U.S.A, you’re life is worth nothing more than a graffiti covered memorial wall. Unless you were really special, perhaps then you’d receive a press statement mentioning your own bloody demise – nothing more, nothing less.

This past weekend the Bronx traveled back in time to the early 90’s and saw at least 9 shootings, claiming 14 victims and 2 deaths. Harlem saw the Wild Wild West at its best with another barrage of 50 shots being fired by the trigger happy NYPD, leaving another Twitter gangster, Luis Soto, dead at the scene.


And if all of this bloodshed wasn’t enough to welcome New York back to yesteryear, the Northern Manhattan police precincts have seen a 58% increase in shootings this year.

The early news conferences about the bloody weekend were cute, with Moneybags Bloomberg holding up a bullet proof vest with a slug artistically protruding from it – only to find out days later it was put there by a fellow cop – not another piece of shit street thug as they’d want us to believe.

But what bothered me even more than the lies being reported by the media was yet another empty statement from our very own Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

Diaz Jr. is supposed to know better; he himself having survived the tumultuous era of the 90’s when we were witnessing our friends lives lost on a quarterly basis as if we had to lighten the growth potential of minorities in the hood or risk overpopulating the areas.

He’s supposed to know better because he witnessed his friends swap their identities for drug addictions, head off to Correctional Universities for educational opportunities in the field of how to stay sane in the penitentiary 101 and how not to catch a buck-fifty (scar across the face) in the yard; coursework on their way to advanced degrees in survival of the fittest.

Yet even worse, he witnessed his own friends lose their lives and that is enough to make him an expert on the subject matter of senseless teen death and violence in our communities.

An expert who should have the unique ability to directly apply what he knows the streets to be, with what he knows success to be…

In my strong opinion, he’s supposed to be able to fix this because he knows the root causes of the problems as well as the answers to the solutions.

So why then does Diaz Jr. merely release another copy and pasted version of his last press release during the previous bloody weekend and promise to meet with two people who have absolutely no damn idea how to fix the issues in OUR communities?

It means absolutely nothing to anyone that he is meeting with Assistant Chief Carlos M. Gomez and District Attorney Robert T. Johnson.

How I’d love to be a fly on that wall, even if I had to sit in Bloomberg’s shit to hear what was being said…

Maybe they’ll come up with ways to arrest more minorities for spitting on the sidewalk, you know lock them up for those quality of life crimes before they really do something wrong.

Or perhaps, they’ll find ways to flood the “high-crime” areas after the shootings take place…

Yeah, because it always makes me feel safe to see cops in the neighborhood after they’ve locked everyone up for the shootings that took place last week.

Makes perfect sense to me!

Once again, I have to ask how many emails and personal face-to-face impromptu meetings do I have to have with Diaz Jr. offering sound advice in hopes that this time he’ll actually hear what I’m trying to say.

Does it make sense to anyone else that we need to reach out to ALL of the community leaders, to ALL of the youth advocates, anti-gang advocates, anti-violence advocates, ALL of the business owners, ALL of the faith based leadership, ALL of the parents who actually care to get involved, ALL of the educational institutions – specifically the teachers who feel handcuffed to make real change?

Does it make sense to anyone other than me that we need to reach EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE if we’re ever going to stand a chance in turning this thing around?

At the end of the day isn’t this all just common sense? Isn’t it about engaging the community in a way that makes them and keeps them vested in the futures of their children and the children they watch grow up? Isn’t it about opening up dialogue to the people that actually see the problems occurring on their stoops, corners and parks on a daily and nightly basis?

Why the hell are we not being involved in planning sessions that force us to be proactive as opposed to reactive?

Can someone please put me in the passenger seat and let me drive this out of control bus reminiscent of Keanu Reeves in the movie Speed and watch me steer us back into the fast lane towards controlled and positive change, change that can be measured, seen and felt.

It’s funny how every week someone is asking me to get into politics, something I never wanted to do. But more and more as I see the inaction of our elected leaders I’m led to believe I just might have to start prepping myself for a future in office.

Why? I guess because I’m tired of the lack of concern and compassion for my neighbors.

It’s time we elect people who cry when a perfect stranger is gunned down because they see themselves standing over the coffin of those they lost the same way…

It’s time someone lets me put ex-convicts to work, who after spending ten, fifteen and twenty years in prison for drug related offenses become the best kinds of mentors to guide the youth back towards reality.

Our teens are stupid… And guess who made them stupid? We did!

Our teens are fearless until you put a real ex-con in front of them who won’t tolerate disrespect from the likes of a little wanna-be gangster looking for love in all the wrong places.

Our teens believe that tweeting about being thugs is the best way to live their lives, just as Luis Soto tweeted before his death this weekend, when on July 23rd he wrote, “I go 2 da grave b4 I be a bitch nigga!”

It’s high time that we introduce them to real gangsters who show remorse for the mistakes they made in life, such as the Wild Cowboys drug crew who I was able to interview on the radio a few weeks back.

And who clearly stated that they’d NEVER glorify a lifestyle that led them straight to jail for 25-to-life. And whose few members remain free are ready, willing and able to combat the false truths being spread by all these fake ass rappers out here pretending it’s perfectly normal for us to kill one another and rap about it in a song, cause it has a nice beat behind it.

Watch me put artists, musicians, actors and creative geniuses to work to educate the youth about our past greatness and our future possibilities.

Watch me heal all the damage that’s been done to our youth utilizing art therapy and writing therapy…

Watch me find the answers for those that already have them so that we can begin to rebuild our communities.

As the rapper Supa Nova Slom powerfully states in one of his songs, “I’m so sick, so sick of being sick and tired…”

Sick of seeing my people die for nothing… sick of seeing people read my blogs and go back to their daily lives as if this doesn’t affect them… sick of action not being taken.

And so sick of our elected officials, those I’ve supported, like Ruben Diaz Jr., not standing up and saying, “Come sit at the table with me… and let’s figure this out…”

Ruben, I’m waiting for your phone call… It’s your move brother… 347.517.3252.

Be like Spike and Do the right thing…



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.

The American Nightmare

The American Nightmare

I’m beginning to develop a severe case of unbelievabitis… which is a condition one contracts after too many encounters with too many truths. Truths which in turn make one say to themselves over and over again, this is un-freaking-believable.

Un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable…
You see mi gente… I’ve acquired a bad case of this disease…

Be forewarned before reading any further into this blog… That by the time you finish reading my words, you too may have contracted this new disease that I’m hopeful will spread to the entire world…

The only cure for unbelievabitis is that you finally awaken out of the mind numbing, brain-dead stupor many of us have remained trapped in since being educated to remain ignorant to the truth for the rest of our lives… in other words, to remain incapable peasants and slaves to the system.

I’ve always felt bad for conspiracy theorists. After all, even if you DID see a UFO, Why on God’s green earth would you ever bother outing yourself? Only to be labeled a lunatic, outcast and shunned by society.

That just never seemed like an attractive option to me, considering we’re all taught to be the most popular in the classroom from the time we roll our little diaper covered asses into nursery school.

The male baby with the biggest bo-bo (pacifier) usually caught the eye of the little lady-baby with the most padding perturbing from her pamper…

Those with no bo-bo’s received no love, thus the birth of the haves and the have-nots.

These days I’m a proud have-not in terms of financial gains… yet even worse, my continuous hunger for self-education has led me right to this point in time when I fear the label “conspiracy theorist” will be placed on me at any moment.

Attack my credibility rather than physically attack me… Or maybe both as one of my Facebook friends, Nigel Clarke, reminded me when responding to my repeated attempts to awaken the masses, “Ivan… you’re already doing it. Just keep in mind, that if you continue to do so, you’ll become a target and then neutralized.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere… as soon as someone starts planning my assassination I’ve truly arrived… Or in Biggie’s terms, “You’re nobody until somebody kills you… baby baby……”

Prior to receiving my own awakening about exactly what this country has been designed to do from the very beginning, I looked at people exactly the way they will soon begin to look at me… I looked at them as if they were quacks.

One such quack was George Carlin. Every time I saw this comedian, he was going on and on about how the government and the system were designed to keep us stupid. I thought the guy was insane, antipatriotic, anti-intelligent and anti-everything else…

I myself was too blind to see the truth he was providing me with on a silver platter. I, like most, only wanted to be “entertained,” not “educated” nor reminded of the uglier truths of life…

Think: Being Latino = Bochinche “versus” Urban Latino = Truth!

It’s the reason everyone and their mother will talk about Ricky Martin being gay, but very few will want to dialogue about an education system that has our teens leaving High School at 5th grade reading levels and 3rd grade math levels.

Just yesterday – on my lazy Sunday afternoon, in-between posting information about the passing of Puerto Rico’s greatest Latina Symbol of Freedom, Delores “Lolita” Lebrón (Rest in Peace) and reading Miguel “Mickey” Melendez’s book, “We Took The Streets,” I stopped to view a video posted by Dr. Mark Naison of Fordham University.

I’m sure you can all attest to the fact that when certain people post content, you sit up and pay attention – for me, Dr. Mark is one of those people.

So instead of blowing off the quack George Carlin video titled, “The American Dream,” I watched in astonishment as he spoke intelligently about the problems of education, big corporation, government and every other timely issue I’ve dealt with over the last few months in these blogs…

Seems he was no quack at all – quite the contrary – a very, very intellectual man who was tired of the lies being passed off as truths.

And when he said, “It’s called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it,” I just about fell out of my chair.

What a classic line… “It’s called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it…” ~ George Carlin (Rest in Peace).

I’d only add to his statement that with people like elitist moneybags Bloomberg heading up the education system in New York… It’s becoming more like the American nightmare.

I reported on Bloomberg’s educational failures back in February of this year, a full six months ago, right here in a piece titled, “The Mis-education of This Generation.”

I’m glad the mainstream media such as the NY Times and NY Daily News are finally catching up with stories reporting the absolute plummet of education in New York. With numbers showing 86% of students passing math last year compared with 61 % this year… And 77% passing English last year, compared with only 53 % passing this year… it’s no surprise that the dumbing down of American students is in full swing.

God forbid Bloomberg give the underprivileged peasants an education that allows us to compete with his precious offspring. God forbid “we” the peasants become educated enough to question why we’re continuously left behind in the pursuit of success.

So much for “No child left behind,” as these staggering plummets in numbers are proof that we’re actually leaving close to half of our children behind… I think they need to change the tag line to, “Leaving half behind…”

Or in some ghettos U.S.A. – leaving almost all of our children behind…

You would think that Bloomberg would have some great political, prewritten response to answer to such a failure right?

Wrong… His response to these failures in the school system reads as follows:

“Lot’s of kids don’t want to go to college. They want to go off and have a career,” he said. “The last time I checked, Lady Gaga was doing just fine after only one year in college.”

Un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable, un-freaking-believable… I have unbelievabitis!

Well now we have the answers people… Your daughters can all be Lady Gaga’s and your sons can all be Justin Bieber’s and we’ll have a happy world of singing, dancing and mindless entertainment to keep us all brain dead for generations to come.

Welcome to my American nightmare…

Can someone please neutralize me already?

I have important discussions I have to get to with Dr. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and George Carlin…



Ivan Sanchez is the author of Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx (Touchstone – Simon & Schuster, 2008). The book is the first memoir released by a major publishing house written by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx. Sanchez is also the co-author of It’s Just Begun: The Epic Journey of DJ Disco Wiz, Hip Hop’s First Latino DJ (powerHouse, 2009). He was awarded the National Novel honors for his first fiction offering and is currently working on several new books about NY Latinos. He is also the co-host of Rebel Radio on Urban Latino Radio.