Urban Latino Magazine

Our Chosen Butterfly… Returns Home

2011-01-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

Our Chosen Butterfly… Returns Home

“God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled...” – Author Unknown

I didn’t really plan on starting out the New Year with tears in my eyes… But that’s life – we don’t always get a say.

The sad and funny truth is that I almost always end up smiling immediately after I cry because I know in my heart that Vivian would be upset with me for shedding so many tears on her behalf…

After all, she faced more hardship in her lifetime than just about anyone I’ve ever met – and she faced it all with a smile on her face and faith in her heart. So who am I to cry?

Vivian Rivera was many things to many people… A mother, daughter, sister, Tia and best friend… She was an accomplished song writer and artist and an advocate of change in her community as well as an activist who raised awareness on breast cancer, she herself being a survivor.

To me, she was the friend I needed during some dark days… and a genuine soul I found to be a comfort as I began to lose faith in humanity and God… She was my voice of reason.

I remember when I received a call from her after my controversial blog, “Someone Please Tell God To Punch Back In…” was published on this site. (You should go read her comment!) She not only schooled me on the blog page – she took the time to call me and spend an hour trying to help me restore my faith without beating me up for losing it in the first place. A rare gem of a soul to say the least…

She was recently featured in the White House / Black Market Campaign celebrating 25 Years & 25 Beautiful Women who were “Living Beyond Breast Cancer…” And I’d never seen her in such an astonishingly beautiful light. Her smile had a way of lighting the darkest path and in that regard she truly was a chosen butterfly.

I met Vivian on Facebook after reading something about her cancer survival and having enough mutual friends to feel as though I knew her.

The first time we spoke on the phone we spent almost an hour speaking about all the things we had in common, the mutual friends, the volunteer work at the Children’s Aid Society’s Next Generation Center, our interest in helping raise awareness about baby Sophia Lopez’s battle with HLH, a rare blood disorder, in hopes of helping her find a suitable bone marrow donor.

We’d been crossing paths and missing each other at the same time – yet here we were becoming fast friends’ even as perfect strangers…

When Vivian found out that Urban Latino Radio was going to be marching in the Puerto Rican Day Parade for Baby Sophia, she told me she’d be honored to march with us – though she didn’t know how she’d do as she was still getting her wind back.

And the morning of the parade was the first time we actually met in person, yet I felt as if I’d known her for most of my lifetime.

I recall her and I getting out of a cab to see ten Latin Kings kneeled and cuffed – it was our welcome to the Parade route along 5th Avenue. And things got even more interesting when we were disrespected by an officer wearing a lot layers on his badge.

It wasn’t that he was saying we couldn’t enter our own staging area that bothered me – it was the way he was speaking down to us disrespectfully that set me off… “Listen you have no right to disrespect us on OUR DAY… It’s Puerto Rican Day… Speak to me with some respect.”

As the argument grew heated a large African American officer approached and my immediate thoughts were, “I’m about to be kneeling next to these Latin Kings… beaten and cuffed… I wonder what Vivian is going to think of me now…”

The officer actually proceeded to walk Vivian and me away from the disrespectful brass and apologized to us. And when I turned to apologize to Vivian she said, “He was in the wrong… You don’t owe me an apology” And I fell in love with her character on the spot.

Towards the end of the parade I could tell she was starting to have trouble with the walk and I handed the banner off to Kidd Boombox, who Vivian had spent ample time comforting about his mother who was also battling cancer, and began to walk Vivian off to the side…

The owner of Urban Latino Radio, Alex, caught us sneaking away and pulled us back – he had no idea what was going on with Vivian… And as we began to march again I said, “We don’t have to finish… Let’s disappear on the next block…”

She simply said, “No, I can make it…” and she did… we did… in honor of Baby Sophia’s own battle.

We laughed about Alex catching us on the ride home… But that’s the way it was meant to be… There would’ve been no better ending and she confessed to me days later that the walk really took a toll on her… But that’s what made her special – the fight to fight for others!

Here come my tears again…

Vivian was not only someone I came to consider a dear friend in such a short period of time… She was one of my biggest supporters…

On one of my blogs she wrote, “I’m very proud and honored to have you as my friend! You are the epitome of strength and leadership with a relentless drive to save our youth from destruction delivering hope and uplifting spirits along the way. YOU ARE truly blessed. If ever in doubt “He” (God) lives in you I know this for sure… Thank you for your wonderful blogs and being our voice. (at least mine).”

I’ve never been a fan of saying goodbye Vivian… So I’ll just let you know that I’ll remain a small piece of that voice you wanted me to be while carrying you in my heart and in my thoughts for all of my days…

I don’t want to make you any promises that I can’t keep… So I can’t promise you that I won’t cry for you… because I miss you already…

But I will promise you that I will smile every time I’m done crying… remembering that people like you exist in this world and that my faith in humanity was jump-started the very moment that I met you… and will remain intact as you now watch over us all…

Our newest angel… Our Chosen Butterfly… We Love You!

In Loving Memory of Vivian Rivera…

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.

All I Want for Christmas is Humanity

2010-12-22T08:55:00.000-08:00

All I Want for Christmas is Humanity

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mahatma Gandhi

December 26th, 2010 will mark the second year anniversary of my own hypocritical journey though the last two years of my life…

A journey I was only just reminded of tonight while watching my illegally downloaded copy of the movie Gandhi.

I’m sure not many of you can sympathize or empathize with the feeling of packing a few suitcases with all of your belongings, along with a few boxes of books on Christmas day, knowing you’d be leaving your children the very next morning.

But I can assure it’s a heart wrenching experience the likes of which I wouldn’t curse or wish upon my most envious of enemies.

Two years later and I still only know for a fact that I was venturing off into a future that promised me nothing other than an opportunity to try to answer what back then was the unanswerable question of why am I really here.

Why am I really here?

It’s one of those survivors guilt questions thrust on those of us willing enough to pay attention to the fact that we survived an upbringing that at times should’ve proven to be un-survivable.
A question that I’ve come no closer to answering after 724 days back in New York than I did when I was living a calm, quiet and comfortable existence back in Virginia Beach.

For those of you who consider yourselves my loyal readers, you’d realize I’ve been gone for over a month from this blog spot.

The exhaustion of chasing down the answer to that question finally got the best of me and I disappeared and went back to the kind of exhaustion that allows workaholics a six-figure salary in corporate America if you’re willing to give up everything else…

80-hour work weeks are enough to turn anyone into a zombie and when you need brainless activity to rest your thoughts… you don’t turn on CNN… you turn on MTV.

So there I was trying to forget… trying to mind my own business after allowing my dreams to collapse in on themselves causing a catastrophic-like claustrophobic cave of silence and nothingness…

Doing what we all do when we give up on our dreams… Getting lost in the irrelevance of popular cultures reality television that is so far from reality, it very rarely allows us to come back…

And then his face brought me back…right there… James Cruz… that son of a bitch snapped me right back out of my own hypnotized state of stupidity and made me remember one of my happiest days in recent memory…

It was the day I sat across a conference room table from him with my partner at the time, Actress April Lee Hernandez and listened to James tell us how we’d never have to worry about money again.

“I’m a dream maker… I make peoples dreams come true for a living… that’s what I do.” – James Cruz
He wasn’t lying to us, at least not intentionally I don’t believe. As a marketing genius and music managing monster that’s helped guide the careers of everyone from Diddy to 50 Cent and Akon to Missy. He’s certainly assisted in dream making for many people including the hottest female rapper to hit the scene in a minute, Nicki Minaj, which led me to my, “Oh shit,” moment while watching My Time Now on MTV a few nights ago…

That day in that conference room – if only for a brief moment – Cruz made April and I believe that altering the mind-states of our teenagers was as important as how many units 50 Cent would sell in his first week. He provided us with so much hope that I remember watching April wipe tears of joy away from her eyes.

Though I never heard back from James after his promise to help promote my first book, Next Stop, it was one of those defining moments in my life that made me realize that I could reach for the stars, after all I was only one degree removed from Diddy at that point.

But the all too sad reality was the fact that I had to grow-up and realize that changing a life, or even saving a life for that matter isn’t profitable. It’s too great a monetary cost for us to expect any men of prominence and wealth to take up as a cause. That is of course unless one needs a tax deduction at the end of the year.

No, unfortunately the profit still remains in our own ignorance. Ignorance so strong that it not only sustained itself for the past few generations, but it’ll far surpass any ignorance we’ve seen for generations to come.

It’s on the same level as my own inner ignorance that made me believe I could come back to New York and change the world.

I guess being laughed at by a co-worker prior to walking away from a 15-year career now seems like justifiable laughter. At the time I was all gun-ho about proving him wrong. But these days, I just want to prove myself right… that in the midst of a failed dream. I can still retain my dignity and my own humanity.

This year I would’ve made 17-years as a loyal employee of a billion dollar company in Virginia Beach. My Christmas bonus would’ve been in the range of $7,500.00. And my kids wouldn’t have wanted for anything that daddy couldn’t get them this year and stuff under the tree.

I wonder if they’ll ever forgive me for leaving them and failing at this mission I explained to them was something I was called to do.

No matter that outcome… I still have to hold on to the belief that my children are better served seeing that sometimes sacrifice for the greater good of humanity is much more rewarding than our own financial gain in this lifetime. Even when they can’t see the actions of their father.

Perhaps I only ever returned to New York to buy those two cans of formula for that stranger’s baby with my last ten bucks in the bodega that night… Maybe my destiny was to feed a hungry child that one night.

Or the night I almost got beat up trying to help a drunk and homeless man with one leg get out of the middle of the intersection on 125th Street even though his wish was to stay right there even if he had to hit me with his crutch to do it… Perhaps destiny dictated that my timing kept him from being hit by a car.

Maybe it was the time I tried like hell to give a deranged homeless guy wearing a bag for a shoe the $16.00 I had in my pocket only to watch him stare endlessly into a puddle of dirty water while trying to wash his face…

He never looked up… never took the money…

No matter the ending… the means were justified in taking just a few moments out of my day to be a humanitarian.

The men in India who saw Mahatma Gandhi’s gift to inspire and help his people… changed the course of the world. More so perhaps than Gandhi himself…

When Gandhi first returned to India he told the powers that be that his first course of action would be to setup his law practice to feed his family. Even back then, money made the world go round…

Luckily for the world, they told him, “You forget about your practice… you have other things to do. India has many men with too much wealth and it’s their privilege to acknowledge the few who can raise India from servitude and apathy…”

Imagine that… the privilege of the wealthy to support the few who can inspire those needing inspiration to live better lives.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever find that kind of support system…

But I’m not going to let that stop me from asking Santa for it this year…

Santa… If you get this letter… I need some wealthy men and women who believe in change to support me on my future campaign of, “A penny for your thoughts…” so I can go back out there and listen to our youth… and find out how we can bring about change for a few of them…

And this time… I’m going to make them pay for my advice so I can pay it forward… You have a problem… You need to talk? That’ll be one penny please…

We all need to give a little this Christmas!

Be the change you want to see in the world… - Mahatma Gandhi

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.

Poor People are Punks

2010-11-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

Poor People are Punks

When it comes to politics… poor people are the worst kinds of punks I’ve ever laid eyes on.

And when I say poor, I’m not only speaking about the almost 36 million Americans, according to the US Census Bureau, living below the poverty line…

I’m speaking directly to every American who has found themselves struggling over the last two years due to this countries great depression. Yet who didn’t have any fight left in them to make it to the polls during midterm elections last week…

You’re all punks…

I’m speaking to those middle class Americans who’ve had their homes foreclosed on over the last few years, but had no voice in this political war…

You’re all damn punks!

I’m speaking to the almost 15 million unemployed Americans who chose not to take the fight to the ballot boxes. Who in failing to do so, refused to retain democratic control of congress, now turning it back over to a republican controlled government for the unforeseeable future…

A government congress of republicans who will surely fail to redistribute any of the elitist’s wealth back over to we the people…

You’re all the worst kind of damn punks I’ve ever had the displeasure of being stuck in a foxhole with!

Yes, I… we… together… are all stuck in the trenches, but the sad truth is many of us aren’t even loading our proverbial weapons… those weapons being our intellects.

We’re not educating ourselves, much less our children about the real power of the vote… And in failing to do so, we’ve already lost the fight, the battle and the whole damn war… At least for another 8 to 10 years…

"The war against working people should be understood to be a real war.... Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class.... And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don't want anybody else to know about it." - Noam Chomsky

Again, while the American worker lost 25% and more of their 401K plans, the 400 richest Americans wealth increased by $30 billion, brining their combined wealth to $1.57 trillion…

Who cares right? We didn’t need retirement funds or seed money for our children’s college educations… Who the hell needs to go to college these days anyway?

I’d probably be pointing my daughter towards a more financially rewarding career if I told her to drop out of college and become a marijuana dealer instead…

Considering the fact that, “17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.”

Why invest all that money into your own future, if you can start at Applebee’s tomorrow?

May I take your order please?

The sad thing is that I always used to tell my daughters in the drive thru as we pulled up, “If you don’t want to be asking someone, “Would you like fries with that,” you better go to college girls…”

With the BLS reporting that hundreds of thousands of college educated professionals are now working as waiters, waitresses and parking lot attendants, seems to me that trying to “Educate” my daughters about education was way off the mark of what America has now become.

But why cry out in pain about it anymore?

I’ll leave that to the 5,057 janitors in the U.S. who hold Ph.D.’s and other doctorates while also holding a mop… Seems they have quite a bit to be pissed off about.

The saddest truth is that it’s beginning to become fundamentally clear to me that we have no one to blame for our current conditions but ourselves.

No more blaming the man… no more blaming the government and no more blaming Jay-Z and the Illuminati…

We don’t vote… we don’t care… we’re voiceless…

So it’s about time we start taking a cold hard look in the mirror and accepting responsibility for refusing to get off our lazy asses and take back our country…

This isn’t some illuminati, conspiracy theory bullshit babble here by a crazy man wanting to start a revolution because he’d rather die than pay back the $50K in student loans he has… Yes, I’m talking about myself…

These are black and white facts, researchable by any ten year old with a knack for Google and a few key words like, “Why is America in the shitter?” and “Why aren’t mommy and daddy doing anything about it?”

I’ll tell you why… because we’re too busy in every ghetto U.S.A, as I like to call it, teaching our kids how to fight…

And if you don’t believe me go to YouTube and key in, “Fights in the Hood.”

Oh, you better believe we love fighting… I became so transfixed and mesmerized or ignorantly hypnotized by the, “Fights in the hood,” videos that I ended up watching parts 1, 2 and 3… and moved on to Fights in the Hood New York, LA and Las Vegas Editions…

It was enough to almost make me want to call it quits on ever writing another blog again… But then that’s a weekly thing these days as I grow tired of seeing my people so unwilling to fight for what’s right… to fight for change…

Instead, we fight over dirty looks, over hoodrats (both male and female) over a stepped on pair of Jordan’s, “Shit’s is expensive son,” over nothing and everything due to our frustrations of wanting everything and having nothing…

And in the end… that makes us all punks… Because we’re fighting ourselves… have been for decades and most likely will continue to do so until one day the 400 richest men in American leave to their planet and laugh on their way out of orbit while we finish each other off until there is no one left…

Seems like we’re all headed for a self-fulfilling doomsday prophecy of 2012-like proportions…

Professor Dr. Mark Naison of Fordham University summed it up best this week when he wrote on Facebook about his projections for what comes next in the Bronx…

“More fights and violent incidents in schools, and more abusive behavior toward teachers, as young people feel the stress of the economic crisis on their families and caretakers. Young mothers turning to prostitution to help them and their children stay in apartments whose rents they can barely afford. More vicious attacks on vulnerable groups – particularly gays and recent immigrants – by groups of young men and women…”

It was an assessment I not only agreed with, but one which founder of Urban Latino Radio, Alex Norman and I began to speak about over a year ago, when we began discussing what happens next…

In the end I believe it’s all about karma…

On a grand scale – America goes to Afghanistan and Iraq and slaughters hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children… all while looking for one terrorist… and plunging us into trillions of dollars in debt… Bad Karma!

On a much smaller scale – we’ve stopped caring about each other as neighbors and prefer to turn a blind eye to violence and crime all the while contributing to the complete devastation of compassion in our communities… Bad Karma!

And in the end… We were all just a bunch of punks who failed humanity!

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.

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www.urbanlatino.com

Teens With a Purpose… Makes Moves to Change the World

2010-10-27T07:36:00.000-07:00

Teens With a Purpose… Makes Moves to Change the World

The name of the collective says it all…Teens With a Purpose… The Movement!

A name so undeniably powerful that when correctly deciphered becomes the definitive solution to the unanswerable question of, “How do we save our teenage populace?”

In my humblest opinion, I don’t believe there is any better way to save our youth than to empower them with the abilities and resources to save themselves… and this is what TWP sets out to accomplish.

I was extremely humbled and honored to be invited to speak again this year at the 2nd Annual Teens With A Purpose Silent Auction & Gala in Norfolk, Virginia with special guest of honor and board member Al Roker of NBC’s Today Show in support of such an important cause.

And just hours after arriving with very little sleep, the speech began to write itself in my head as if it was always destined to be given this way… “I want you all to know that Deirdre Love and I caught the very same disease… at the very same time…”

I was speaking about my co-worker and good friend, Founder & Executive Director of TWP, who in 2008 had begun to share with me her truest mission in life. It just so happened to be at the same time I was running around as Co-founder of the “What Is Your Next Stop?” campaign with Actress April Lee Hernandez, while we tried to educate the youth about the importance of their next stop in life…

Our missions were identical – actively working towards empowering the youth to find their own self worth– and giving them the real world education necessary to understand that they had the power to become productive members of society no matter what conditions they were being raised in.

The disease Dee and I both caught – most likely in the water cooler at work – made us both allergic to money and financial stability. It made us care more about humanity, than currency, a very rare disease to say the least. And not a disease many would care to become infected with in the materialistic society we’ve all become so accustomed to.

Unfortunately for us, the doctors in Hampton Roads, also known as our friends, had no ability to cure us with their words including, “You’re crazy if you leave a secure position in a billion dollar company, to attempt to save the un-savable teens of this generation…”

That’s not to say that all of our friends were against what we were doing, many were extremely supportive, while others simply couldn’t see the vision we had.

But at the end of the day, Deirdre and I had to make our own paths in life, and I’m happy to report that neither one of us listened to reason, we stayed the course. And while our approaches were a little different; our conviction was unshakeable as we both set out in separate directions while walking the very same path.

Deirdre began to work hard to promote the TWP movement in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, while I returned to ground zero here in the South Bronx, trying to establish my own movement of positive change for the youth.

We stayed in touch and I was always happy to hear about her progress with TWP, even though my campaign was failing miserably as financial supporters continued to back away from promises, leaving me with nothing more than an empty bank account and broken dreams as the economy continued to plummet further and further into despair.

I recall one meeting April Lee and I had with a millionaire who looked us dead in the eyes and said, “You make your fortune first, you write a check and you call it a day… That’s charity!”

One of the most powerful men in New York City had just told us that our vision of bettering the lives of the youth was meaningless… We walked towards the South Street Seaport with tears in our eyes and broken spirits…

That meeting was the beginning of the end for the “What Is Your Next Stop?” campaign.

And it became apparent to me that when these services were needed at their peak, they weren’t going to be available.

Programs for the poor and underserved have and always will be the victims of a downturn in the economy, leaving the rich to duck, run and cover up their money… while the underserved youth are left to stand on corners playing deadly games of killing time and sometimes themselves and each other. All the while witnessing their single parents stand on lines 3 blocks long hoping to get dinner at the neighborhood food bank…

Capitalist America, at it’s best!

Educator and Historian Alfred Whitney Griswold once wrote, “Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth we have spoken it…”

It is a statement that defines the beliefs we must instill in our youth, for once they accept this as a way of life, as opposed to the do-or-die, get rich or die trying, gangster mentalities so ingrained in their psyches, it is only then that we can begin to turn the direction of their lives around for the better.

Teens With Purpose is a movement that sets out to instill self-respect into the psyches of these creative, talented and beautiful young people. So that once the light begins to shine in their heads and their hearts, it can never be dulled, dimmed or put out again.

TWP’s most important contribution to society will most certainly revolve around the fact that they are educating and empowering their peers in ways very rarely seen. And they’re doing it through the power of song, dance, acting and spoken word…

On Saturday morning (10/26/2010) TWP took over the Lamberts Point Community Center in Norfolk, Virginia and gave the youth a taste of what it meant to be a move maker… A person who takes those initial steps to invoke positive change in their lives…

And it felt so beautiful to see all of the young people singing, dancing, smiling and laughing… It felt right…

The internal pride was sparked inside of me as I listened to Emeka (Soul), Richard (Testimony), Sylvantria (One Word) & RaShay (King Ti) sing, “You don’t understand I was made to be different…” for what they were singing about was understanding and hope…

And as Testimony broke out into spoken word he recited, “You don’t understand I’m different from those who go through the motions in life likes waves and call it living…”

It was a young mans cry to his peers to stand up and realize that life is not dictated nor defined by their environment, but more so by their own beliefs in their God given right to be different, to be accepted and to be respected…

Deirdre Love became different the moment she caught this disease of love and humanity… and decided to act upon it…

Al Roker, Karen Mantel, Tanya Kearney, Nicole Livas, Queen GodIs and everyone else who came out to support this worthy event all caught this same disease and in doing so became different…

My girlfriend, Leslie Ann Sastre caught the bug of being different during this event, when she jumped out of her chair and donated a great deal of money to help this movement continue to build it’s legacy…

As for me, I was just proud to have my first born Heaven Aja there to see just how different her father is… Different enough to hope you all become infected with the disease of humanity…

Teens With Purpose… The name itself speaks to the power of the change that is beginning to manifest itself.

In Loving Memory of Adam...

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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.

If I Were Gay… I’d Kill You Before I Killed Myself…

2010-10-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

If I Were Gay… I’d Kill You Before I Killed Myself…

Message to all bullies: I don’t like you; I don’t fear you and I damn sure don’t respect you…

Ever since I was a young child, I’ve never appreciated a person that used their size or power over others as an intimidation tactic.

Most likely due to the fact that I have this unnatural curse that ensures I feel a perfect stranger’s pain, even with just a mere glance. So seeing people suffer is never something I care to be exposed to in person, and if confronted with one human being abusing another, I have no choice but to address it on the spot.

The professional therapists of the world define this as internalizing – which basically means taking ownership over others pain and making it your own…

I call it being a pit-bull stuck in a Chihuahua’s body... And though I’m usually the smallest guy at the battle, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to back up my bark with the right size bite whenever necessary.

I simply don’t care to see people being forced into fear, and when it comes to bullies… I have no tolerance for you.

Over the last week life has seemingly come full circle for me. As I reentered corporate America, accepting a position as a project manager for a billion dollar company on 51st & Lexington.

The last time I was working amongst the capitalist giants of America, I was 20-years old, working on the 30th Floor of tower two in the World Trade Center… until I ended my own career shortly after the first bombing in 1993, and my Cousin Tony’s murder in the Bronx…

Too much madness… not enough stomach for it… the plush landscapes of Virginia Beach was calling and I happily answered the call…

But now here I am back on the iron horse, 17-years later, the protocol son returns, and I’m sitting on the D Train at Midnight, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase… trying to abide by the same rules I wrote about in a chapter called Subway Survival 1010, in my memoir, “Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx…”

There’s only one problem… At my age, I don’t care to be told what to do… not even when I’m the one doing the telling.

So instead of sitting stuck in fear in the dark tunnels of New York’s underground… I carry a weapon in my briefcase just on the off-shoot chance that someone mistakes me for a metro-sexual, or a gay man, or a man whose shoes are too shiny or tie is too pink… a man who is dressed way to pretty to be able to defend himself…

In other words I’m the modern day Bernard Goetz (minus the racist antics) sitting on the train waiting for someone to attempt to victimize me…

During the early part of the week, on my commute, I found myself reading updates via the NY Daily News about the suicide of Rutgers University student, Tyler Clementi, who decided his best option was to take one last dive off the George Washington Bridge, rather than deal with the humiliation of being “outed” as a gay man on Facebook or You Tube.

And by week’s end, the story of nine sadistic heartless teens from the Bronx calling themselves the Latin King Goonies were being rounded up for savagely sodomizing three gay men in a torturous gang assault in an abandoned house at 1910 Osborne Avenue…

Reading stories like this left my heart beating faster than the train on the tracks racing uptown, it left me with emotions of anger and disgust, and left my Facebook status reading, “I’m seriously considering becoming gay for a short time… just so that I can lie in wait for someone to try that hate crime bullshit on me…”

I’ve actually had a few propositions since posting this update - should I decide I don’t love you women anymore… and the propositions didn’t offend me or send me flying off the deep end… They made me smile in flattery, no different then if a woman I wasn’t interested in would hit on me… I’d simply say thank you, I’m happily involved…

For those of you who read my blogs on a weekly basis, you’d understand that I haven’t written over the last several weeks because nothing has moved my heart to put pen to paper… I write from my soul and no news is good news for me… It means an empty blog come next Monday morning…

But with continued reports of other young gay men committing suicide over the past few months, I realized it was time to man up and speak out against the intolerance even those in my own circle have shown to the gay community at times…

Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase and Billy Lucas, were all living, breathing, beautiful human beings who were born to love those of their own gender, no different than I have it in my heart to be attracted to women… and these poor young men didn’t deserve to be mercilessly tortured until their only option was to end their own existence in this world…

No one deserves this as a final fate!

Asher Brown was a 13-year old boy from Texas who shot himself in the head rather than be picked on for being different…

Seth Walsh was another 13-year old from California who chose to hang himself rather than endure the relentless bullying he’d been subject to… Justin Aaberg was a 15-year old Minnesota boy who also hung himself…

Raymond Chase, yet another young man at only 19-years old from New York who also hung himself…

And Billy Lucas, another young teen from Greensburg, Indiana who’d actually been told to kill himself by his bullies, when he finally decided it was in his best interest to simply comply rather than continue the never-ending taunting…

This must be all very good news to Republican, New York Governor hopeful, Carl Paladino who was quoted as saying, “I don’t want [children] brainwashed into thinking homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option – it isn’t…”

So in his words, these young teenagers, who were just starting to feel what drew them to love, were somehow brainwashed by endless episodes of Sex in the City, and decided to turn gay because it was cool and hip and wouldn’t lead to the types of torture that would drive them all to suicide…

He went on to say there is, “Nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual…”

Message to Carl Paladino: Should you win the race to be Governor of New York, I will move out of state within 24-hours. I will not be represented by someone as intolerant as you…

Message to my friends: If you say no-homo around me, consider yourself an ex-friend… I will no longer tolerate any form of anti-gay slurs in my presence.

I may not be able to change the world… or the views of those who are not immediately accessible to me… But I can change myself and the behaviors of those around me who choose to continue these negative connotations that lead to bias against groups of people who may choose to live a little differently than us…

I’m declaring it Gay Week, Gay Month and Gay Year… in memory of all the young lives being lost, and those that continue to be tortured every moment of everyday… Please know you are not alone in this fight… Please don’t give up… Please don’t end your life… There are better days ahead…

My next T-shirt will read, “I’M GAY (front)… DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT (back)!

I suggest you all get one… and wear it with pride…

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.

Can Someone Please Murder Intolerance & Ignorance?

2010-09-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

Can Someone Please Murder Intolerance & Ignorance?

I had a severe case of writers block last weekend. On the nine year anniversary of 9/11, I once again fell into that place of depression one falls into when trying to process loss…

September 11th, 2001 is as painful a day to revisit in my mind, even all these years later, as it was to actually experience the agonizing shock of the morning itself.

For some reason the media always mentions how beautiful the weather was on that fateful day – as if terrible disasters should only happen in the midst of thunderous storms that set the scene for certain despair.

Me personally, I never would’ve realized what nature had to offer us in the way of the climate that morning, for I was already in mourning myself, early on a day, which at its close would come to alter Americas sense of security indefinitely…

My head was already hung low to the ground, my dark suit was neatly pressed and all of my thoughts revolved around heading off to a funeral for the mother of my good friend, Melvin Freeman, who had regrettably passed away several days prior.

It was only a few days earlier that I was immersed in deep conversation with Mel about the intricate topic of life and death. My conversation with him at his mothers wake was one of assurance that even in this tragedy… that even after losing the rock and the foundation of his very existence, that the only way to make his mother proud would be to live a fruitful life himself, a meaningful life… a life of purpose.

I was basically asking him not to give up on life…

Can you imagine the tens of thousands of conversations like this that took place in the days after 9-/11?

Can you imagine how many difficult memories still plague those who lost loved ones so many years ago, seemingly as if it were only just yesterday?

In my eyes… the worst part about loss, is the loss of the dreams that one realizes will never come to fruition with the person no longer her to live out those imaginings.

On the morning of 9/11, I don’t believe I could’ve been sitting in a safer environment as the towers were burning, preparing to collapse, because I was sitting in a church in Norfolk, Virginia...

And although it was a funeral… it was far from solemn.

Even being in my 30’s, I was just being exposed to new experiences, new cultures and religions.

And here I was learning that an African American funeral is a celebration of life, complete with angelic singing from the choir, dancing in the isles and praying out in joy that this life was somehow a blessing to all who knew Mrs. Freeman.

They truly do celebrate life…

It was a far cry from the incense smoke and dark hymns of the many Catholic funerals I’d become accustomed to in the early years of my life…

I lost a lot of water weight that morning, tasting my own salted tears flowing down my face, as if my face were a leaky faucet that simply couldn’t be plugged…

I was crying out in heartbreak for my good friend’s mother… crying out for all those I’d lost along my own journey through life and crying out in pain due to the atrocities taking place in my native New York on that historically tragic day… while I was sitting in a comatose state in God’s house.

And I never really stopped crying… Even as the years on the calendar continued to change, the pain of that day never really leaves ones soul… Does it?

Several months after 9/11, in November I flew to Seattle on business. As with many of my past career-related travels, I was alone, yet wanting to experience my surroundings… places I never could’ve imagined visiting when I was a corner kid back in the Bronx… So I headed out…

On this night, I was on the observation deck of the Seattle Space Needle enjoying the breathtaking scenery of a lovely city lit up illuminating its own magical beauty.

And while there was no comparison to the beauty of New York City from the observation deck of the World Trade Center, it gave me peace to be sixty stories up enjoying a beautiful night sky…

Until that sense of peace was shattered by my own intolerance…

I turned to observe six Muslim men, dressed in full traditional garb speaking in a native tongue I had no hopes of deciphering…

My deepest levels of ignorance and intolerance reared themselves to me that night, as I began to wonder if these men were there plotting to blow up the Space Needle… or even worse, preparing to blow it up at that very moment…

As I looked down from sixty stories above the earth, I immediately caught flashbacks of New Yorkers leaping to their own deaths on 9/11… I shook my head and grew disturbingly angry at the events of that day… I wanted to fight… But I didn’t even know who my enemy was. I caught myself staring at these men as if they were the terrorists… though they were most likely just tourists themselves wanting to experience Seattle as I did…

I locked eyes with one of the men, who quickly turned away. I suppose they didn’t want to be in the habit of inviting confrontation around that very sensitive time.

I can only imagine the racism and hatred they must’ve felt, and still feel to this day when Americans get angry and want to lash out at someone who looks like a terrorist.

Makes me think back to a time when the KKK would grab any Negro boy off the street and hang him on a tree simply for being the same skin color as someone they perceived as the enemy.

Reminds me of the Arizonians sitting on the border waiting to shoot any wetback they see coming across “their” line, into “their country…”

And it definitely looks like the type of racism that is drummed up when intolerance and ignorance are mixed with anger causing a disastrous outcome, such as the stabbing of a Muslim cab driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, by a 21-year-old film student, Michael Enright just a few weeks back.

It took time for me to learn tolerance… and I believe I’m a better man today as my focus is always on over-standing… which means choosing to understand on a higher level of thinking…

Recently, I’ve tried to understand all of the controversy surrounding the mosque being built at Ground Zero and in the end it still merely equates to nothing more than intolerance.

The intolerance, not of a religion that when taken out of context can lead to radicals killing innocents… But the intolerance of “all” who practice that religion and everything they stand for…

Intolerance, coupled with the ignorance to not be understanding of the fact that radical ideologies have existed in every religion since the immersion of mankind and still exist to this day…

One need only look at radical Christians slaughtering abortion doctors, killing innocents while trying to protect innocence… Does that make sense to anyone?

When I think of 9/11, I don’t focus on the pain of the day as much as the stories of those innocents who lost their lives early on that beautiful morning simply because of intolerance and ignorance.

I think instead about people like New York City Firefighter Peter Bielfeld, who was out on medical leave the morning disaster struck. His fate dictated that his medical appointment that morning be located across the street from the World Trade Center…

His fate dictated that even though he wasn’t released to go back to work after being wounded in a Bronx fire, that he was still a firefighter… still a hero… still a man who cared about all of humanity…

His fate dictated that he was a family man who would write a farewell note to his family before heading into the already burning towers…

He said goodbye in a note and he never came home again…

I truly wonder how he’d feel about all of the ignorance and intolerance taking so much of the Medias attention away from the real stories of that day…

The stories of women and men like Peter Bielfeld who ran into those towers to save lives, no matter what color, creed or religion cried for help from inside…

The story about the morning intolerance got the best of humanity… But humanity still survived!

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.

A Final Blog… About My Blogs?

2010-08-30T07:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-08-10T10:47:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

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.

The Virtual Life of a Teen

2010-07-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

The Virtual Life of a Teen

Have you ever heard of a game called ‘Spin the blunt?’

I had the great misfortune of being introduced to this new age updated version of spin the bottle that we sometimes played when I was a young man, by my 18-year-old daughter Heaven, one afternoon on Facebook.

I was basically reading her virtual diary – her Facebook status updates – when I stumbled upon an update that both intrigued me and made my heart sink into my chest…

It seems that this next generation of teens has gotten so comfortable living their life in full view of the globe that Heaven had no problem sharing with the world – and her dad – that she was not only playing ‘spin the blunt,’ but was also now a pothead.

As any parent, I ran the full gamut of emotions from heartbreak and disappointment, to anger and rage. But after a few hours I came to the realization that I needed to place the same effort into speaking to my daughter about the negative affects of drugs, as I do every time I lecture teens across the country.

When I got her on the phone, in a calm tone, the conversation went something like this, “If I ever and I mean ever find out your driving under the influence of marijuana, that precious little car of yours that your parents pay for will be confiscated and sold at auction. No ifs, ands or buts about it… And by the way… smoking weed makes you slow…”

I thought I handled myself quite well – like the ultra-liberal parent I pride myself in being.

It was interesting that when I posed the question to my Facebook family a few weeks ago about what they’d like to see me write about next on this blog, they overwhelmingly voted in favor of a blog suggested by Noel Ramos.

Noel was asking that I write about the affects of Facebook, My Space and other social networking sites on our youth.

The suggestion brought me right back to a year ago when I was volunteering at the Next Generation Center in the South Bronx. After 3 weeks of getting comfortable with the teens, a teen named Jesus, more affectionately known as Chuchi, had finally let his guard down enough to tell me that his friend had been killed over a My Space beef.

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 laugh 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.

And although he wasn’t ready to write in detail about his friends passing, he did touch on the subject just a bit when he wrote his first ever blog titled, “My Space Gangsters Learn Real Life Lessons…”

It was part of the “Unwritten Life,” blog series I was creating with the teens in order to give them a voice and an outlet to blog about what life is really like in the hood.

No actors here, no writers, directors or producers saying, “Be more street…” or “They don’t talk like this son… they talk like this homie…”

No, this was real talk and real writing from the teens that were surviving on these streets everyday, learning real life lessons about what happens when you take social networking and bring that consequence to the real streets, the same streets where even real gangsters have Facebook and My Space pages professing their allegiance to the gangs.

I recalled speaking to Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. in the offices of Urban Latino about these new issues our teens were facing, only to see him go on camera fifteen minutes later and speak word-for-word about what I’d just educated him about, as if he’d experienced the pain himself.

I suppose that’s why they call them politicians… it was of no great consequence to me, because the message was bigger than me, so I let it go in hopes that he’d use his position of power to spread awareness about this new epidemic.

My job was to continue to get the teens to open up and write the pain out of their hearts and onto the virtual paper known as the world wide web of blogging… Let’s call it the blogosphere.

Unfortunately, I was sad to discover recently that the statistics being put out by the Pew Internet Project about Social Media and Young Adults, in which they’ve discovered that the numbers from 2006 to 2009, have seen a decrease in the number of teens, ages 12 – 17, blogging from 28% (2006) to 14 – 15% in 2010.

That’s almost a 50% drop in the number of teens being represented through the written word on the Internet.

It seems that we’ve fallen back into that age old adage of erasing our stories from the history books before they’re every truly read and spoken about.

In another PEW study, it is stated that over 93% of Americans between the ages of 12 to 17 are using the Internet, with almost 73% of those teens accessing social networking sites.

That’s a really, really big audience that needs to be catered to and educated in so many ways, protected and pushed along in a progressive manner.

When I was thinking about all of the teens that drop of out school, as high as 80% in some poorer congressional districts, it became apparent to me that we’re truly not keeping the students engaged.

These are teens that are using Nintendo DS’s before they can make a sentence; they grow into preteens who spend more time communicating virtually than physically. And they are far more technologically advanced than that of our generation.

Place a hardcover, 500 page book in front of them and attempt to teach them in black and white… It’s no wonder they fall asleep in class and just stop showing up. They can get all of that information on Wikipedia for Christ sake.

Until we can find a way to incorporate technology in every classroom, for every educational opportunity we will continue to fall further and further behind other countries in regards to the education of our students.

For all the negatives surrounding social networking and our teenagers, there are far more positives – in my opinion – that should force us to use these as vehicles of success and not failure.

I tell the teens I speak to all the time that my book was discovered on a major level on My Space, that I’ve made more networking opportunities on Facebook in an afternoon, than I ever could’ve made attending 1,000 networking mixers in person.

I also explain to them that the opportunity for them to represent themselves and their work professionally utilizing these social networking platforms is truly limitless. But I remind them that their My Space and Facebook page is a direct representation of who they are.

When I was looking for work in New York as I prepared to relocate, I had a recruiter ask me to remove my Facebook and My Space pages. He said a simple Google of my name led them to those sites which had my book plastered all over them.

So I asked him what the problem was… his reply was that the description of my book, "Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx,” explained that I was an ex-drug dealer and hoodlum and that I’d never find work with that as my past history.

I told him, I’d find work on my own… But it was an interesting learning experience for me. And one we all have to educate our teens about…

Beginning with me telling my precious little first born, Heaven that there should be, “No more posts of ‘spin the blunt,” as you prepare to go to college and enter the working world my love…”

Our virtual life… has now become our real life.

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 Art of the Question

2010-07-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Art of the Question

Australian writer William Alfred (Bill) Beatty once wrote, “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.”

When I write these blogs I never expect, or want my audience to accept at face value everything I’m inscribing. Nor to remember my opinion on the subject matter more than that of their own.

On the contrary, I write in hopes of conjuring up deep thought and critical thinking so that each person who reads my work will be left with an opinion of their own – in search of drawing personal conclusions in regards to the ‘why’s’ of the world.

Over the last few days while traveling with advocates of education with over eighty years experience amongst them, I learned a lesson that I will carry with me until my final breath… that lesson being that the answer is never more important than the question itself.

I learned over the last seventy-two hours that it is indisputably the question that is the seed of what eventually grows into a journey of roots, vines and leaves of answers… answers that allow us to grow into a tree of positive change only if action is taken. Thus the term activism is born.

Jorge Moreno-Cano, publisher of Urban Latino Magazine, coined the term “literary activist” for me, and placed the burden of responsibility on my shoulders to be active with my words… to take action when those around me choose to remain silent.

But it was starting to feel like I too was becoming stagnant myself. And I began to wonder if I’d ever have the answers to the question I am asked on a weekly basis after my blogs are published…

“OK Ivan we get it… this society is screwed up… But what can we do about it?”

And then the invite came…

I was honored to be invited to partake in a mission, which consisted of partnering with a college in Massachusetts to bring further education to the South Bronx, to our people and to one of the most socioeconomically depressed areas in New York City.

It was an emotionally draining experience, but one that has the potential to alter the course of society as a whole for generations to come.

And while I can’t share all of the details as of yet, what I can tell you is that through my journey with Attorney, Dr. Narciso Alemán of United Bronx Parents, Inc. and Activist Lupe Casares of Parents with Power based out of Houston, Texas, I was enlightened in ways that are truly immeasurable.

And that as the light bulbs began to illuminate in my head, it was as if a one-hundred light bulb chandelier began to glow with thoughts of what a better tomorrow would look like. If only we could educate the uneducated and transform their hopelessness into self-confidence, a belief in their communities and a belief in a brighter future for all generations to follow.

After all, it truly is about the legacies we leave behind in the end.

Dr. Alemán and Mr. Casares awakened me to the fact that we’ve been preconditioned to already know the answers that ‘they’ want us to know. That we’ve been force-fed the answers before we’re even posed the question in an unbalanced game of memorization.

Quite possibly because if we become accustomed to already knowing the answer, we’ll never go back and question the question itself.

Does that make sense?

Case in point: Who discovered America?

Well in the Catholic School system I’d been educated in, I was already pledging allegiance to the Americas and the “founders” of this country, while being taught about the demonic Indians and our savior Christopher Columbus who discovered this great new world.

To explain away those who already called this world home, they used words like savages and showed us imagery of white people being scalped to induce fear in our hearts.

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…

By default they’re going straight to jail… Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00… and even worse, they’re of an alien race, and we all know the little green men are coming to end the world as we know it one day. That’s enough to scare the hell out of America isn’t it?

They want us to remain scared so that they may serve as the saviors and protectors of ‘we the peasants,’ in order for us to remain forever grateful and indebted to them for saving us from ourselves, from our dirty little histories and from ever discovering our own greatness. A greatness which remains clouded and hidden from full view of the truth. A greatness they’ll never want us to discover for fear that we’d want to rediscover what we’re truly capable of.

Mi gente, we’ve been erased from the history books for decades past… and we continue to erase ourselves every time we fail to write our own stories, family histories and to support the few in existence that do…

What I can tell you with all certainty, is that we must be worth more than a welfare system, an unemployment line, a food bank line and peasant wages for quality work and commitments to better the organizations we serve…

We must be worth more than that, ¿Qué no?

Every once and a while we’re enlightened to the answers we’ve been searching for.

And I now know with 100% certainty, that until we raise the educational level of Latinos and minorities as a whole, we will “never” be able to compete, we will never be able to evoke positive change and we might not even survive all of the atrocities this world has to offer.

The truest change will come from the top, but only if it starts with those at the bottom who’ve survived against unimaginable odds and made it there with their convictions intact.

I once was a victim of the American dream and it almost swept me away to a world of plush green golf courses, expensive Cohiba cigars, bottles of exquisite tasting Merlots and filet mignon cooked to perfection.

I’ve experienced it and I wasn’t asked to leave… I made the conscious decision to come back into the community that birthed me in high hopes of shaking the next person out of the brainwashed induced coma they’ve successfully plunged us all into…

The mission is clear: To bring higher education to 100 Bronxites in Human Services so that they may serve as the next crop of leaders, activists and advocates of change…

The question remains: Who will step up and take this challenge?

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.

Latino controversy sells… But is it clean money?

2010-07-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Latino controversy sells… But is it clean money?

I was going to write this week’s blog about the negative impact social networking sites, such as Facebook and My Space, are having on our teenagers, thus on society as a whole. However, as I was doing research on the subject matter I also had one eye watching a seemingly quiet storm.

A Latino storm which was rapidly beginning to pick up a significant amount of force as it raced its way through the geographical bandwidth tunnels that connect us all in this Facebook domain, which is quickly becoming our virtual reality.

Welcome to the fast paced world of video blogs, blogs, status updates and enough controversy to put all daytime soap operas out of business at the close of my generation.

Several weeks ago my good friend Casper Martinez of Latino Film Chatter began to compile a list of top 1,000 reasons he was not going to attend the New York International Latino Film Festival this year.

Here’s an example of his list:

“Reason # 5 I’m not going to the wanna-be Latino Film Festival: Have you seen the idiot Tony Kaye telling us to cut the umbilical chord? Great, a British guy giving Latinos his take on our culture. Calixto you are an idiot for allowing that. Then again should we expect any better? Maybe Lyndon McCray can edit an apology video for you…” ~ Casper Martinez

A very comical and strongly opinionated entry no doubt… However, Casper has said on many occasions that he’s not personally attacking Calixto and this one seemed a wee bit on the personal attack side of life in my humble opinion.

I don’t think Casper will be happy with me for saying this. But we’ve always respected each others right to express ourselves. So I think we’ll still be friends after this blog goes up.

I don’t know anything about Tony Kaye other than that he directed American History X, which is a very powerful film that enlightens us all about racism in this country. And when I saw his interview, in my personal opinion, he seemed to be coming across as sincere in his suggestion that we’re all one people. Being that I have a daughter who is of African American, Philippine, Chinese and Puerto Rican descent, I’m very comfortable with the separation and segregation of races coming to an end in my generation.

However, Casper’s argument was that a Latino should’ve directed the commercial for the “Latino” film festival… I can’t argue with him on that point, being that it’s so difficult for Latinos to get work these days. I also couldn’t see myself faulting Calixto for wanting to work with a talent such as Tony Kaye, so I stayed silent on the matter.

Or as I learned to say down south, “I had no dog in that fight…”

Interestingly enough I met Calixto Chinchilla, founder of the New York International Film Festival through Casper Martinez some years back, and I’ve always found him to be a very personable and likeable gentlemen. So my only wish would’ve been to see this come to the table to find a resolve that all parties would’ve been satisfied with. In lieu of once again airing our dirty laundry for the world to laugh about. It seems there truly is very little loyalty amongst Latinos these days.

It must be part of what diminishes our strength in Hollywood and keeps us from acquiring the type of power the Jewish, Italians, African Americans and yes, the Mexicans have acquired in filmmaking.

But Ivan, aren’t Mexican’s Latinos?

I’m not even going to touch that one right now in regards to the strides Mexicans have made in Hollywood that the rest of the Latino populace can’t even begin to come close to. That’s a blog for another day.

Lyndon McCray is a talented filmmaker in his own right who I first met on the Franc Reyes film, The Ministers, EPK shoot. I ran across Lyndon several more times including at a screening of the short documentary, This War At Home, that I was involved in. He gave me a great deal of praise on the piece and placed it on the Cinedulce website, which is run by NYILFF.

And true, as Casper said, if anyone could edit a nice apology together for Calixto, it would be Lyndon. But why should Calixto apologize?

Well here’s where it gets interesting and where I’ve now had to place a ‘dog in the fight,’ if you will, possibly at the expense of being banned from the festival for life…

My good friend Linda Nieves-Powell, author (Free Style), award winning playwright and all around bad ass Latina chick who took on MTV last year and won her battle to remove some bullshit portrayals of Latinos from the channel, has taken offense to the early cuts of the NYILFF commercials now airing on the website.

The commercial is of a snobby little future filmmaker directing her abuelita to say her lines correctly, even though her lines only consist of the words, “Yes,” and “Si...”

When abuela fails to deliver the lines to her satisfaction she yells, “You stupid old bitch… these generation gaps really piss me off...”

As if the words weren’t shocking enough, the next thing you see on the screen is a gun firing off two rounds.

Are we to assume that this “pissed off” mini-filmmaker just smoked her abuela for not delivering her lines?

Only time will tell how the commercial ends… but so far, in my opinion… No Bueno!

I watched the commercial many times to see what it was that bothered me, or if anything about it bothered me, not to be the bandwagon guy…

And in all honesty, the only thing that bothered me was the gun being brought into the equation at the end. I see too much violence out here in the streets of the South Bronx to be turned on by the sound of gunfire.

I’m much more shocked when I see a four-year-old in the street call her mom a bitch and watch the mom laugh about it – but it happens all the time.

I’m much more shocked that we do have a generational gap that is so large that our elders truly are no longer respected in any communities I’ve been to recently.

I’m much more shocked that while I agree with Casper’s initial assessment, complaint and argument that he merely wants the NYILFF to live up to it’s mission statement, at least the part that reads, “Our mission is to showcase the works of the hottest emerging Latino filmmaking talent in the US and Latin America. Offer expansive images of the Latino experience. And celebrate the diversity and spirit of the Latino community…” That we still can’t come together as professional Latinos and find peaceful resolve to these conflicts.

Casper has helped many talented people find their way in this entertainment business – Shit, he discovered my book and placed me in a position to be writing this blog… Calixto has provided a platform to many others and hopefully will one day be airing Next Stop: Growing up Wild-Style in the Bronx on the big screen at the festival when the right team comes along to produce it.

These are two brothers I have a great deal of respect and admiration for… I just can’t see why we have to continue to play the controversy card knowing it will help us sell but won’t help us progress… knowing it will also leave us all tarnished…

I guess Diddy has it right… It’s all about that dirty money.

Someone recently told me I’ll never be successful because I choose not to play the game dirty… I disagreed and told them when I get there I’ll change the rules. So get ready for a new game one day…

Until then, we’ll all have to agree to disagree.

And as NYILFF prepares to announce the panels for this years festival… there can be no better panel than to place Casper Martinez, Calixto Chinchilla, Linda Nieves-Powell, Lyndon McCray and Tony Kaye on a stage and let these great industry minds work their magic.

Towards a better resolve, a better festival, a better unity for Latinos and better days ahead.

Or is that just my wishful thinking getting the best of me again?

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.

Die Peasant… Die

2010-07-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Die Peasant… Die

I have to admit that it’s growing more and more difficult for me to come up with new shock and awe writing campaigns for all of my Urban Latino Magazine blog supporters.

Yet somehow, someway I manage to stumble onto a new astonishing topic almost weekly. A topic that I know will make the readers ask, “What the hell?”

Furthermore a subject matter that will make people stand up, pay attention and have a strong reaction to what it is I’m trying to raise awareness about.

In other words, I love to make you all angry in hopes of building a revolt and bringing about positive change!

And of course this week was no different as I innocently pressed play on a Michael Moore documentary titled, “Capitalism… A Love Story.”

For those of you who know me well enough, you’d know that I’m a chronic crier when I watch love stories play out on the silver screen; it always makes me emotional when they find their Mr. or Mrs. Right and live happily ever after…

And in keeping true to my emotional side, this documentary (love story) made me cry rivers of tears, tugged at my heartstrings and once again managed to make me feel very disheartened to be represented by this American government of ours.

Oh shit, did I just say that out loud and blog it for the world to read?

I guess I should prepare for all of the, “Leave our country spic,” comments that are going to come my way as a result.

After all, lord knows we’re not allowed to be anti-government without also being considered anti-American. Truth is though, I could care less at this point as I am continuously exposed to just how dead inside we all must be, to continue to allow the tyranny of this government to rule with an iron fist… minus any opposition.

Yes, mi gente… I do want a revolution. And it seems that hunter Bob from Middle America is starting to feel the same way… Maybe we are headed in the right direction after all.

Shortly after Moore’s documentary opens, an older Caucasian farmer (Bob) says, “There’s gotta be some kind of a rebellion between the people that have nothing… and the people that’s got it all…”

Seems that after doing everything he was supposed to do to live out the American dream, the refinancing loans on his family farm and home, had finally inflated beyond the point of affordable payments. Thus leaving him in the street with the rude awakening that this country is no longer the land of the free… only the land of the rich.

As the foreclosure madness swept through this country like never before, the banks found ways to maximize their cost ability and instead of paying clean up services thousands of dollars to prepare foreclosed homes for resale… They offered one final slap in the face of a thousand dollars to the evicted residents to leave their lost homes spotless.

“Here’s your check… now get the hell out!”

While the majority of this country continued to slide into the depths of poverty, the rich gained more wealth than their wettest dreams could’ve afforded them ever imagining…

Citibank released a top secret memo to its richest shareholders stating that this country was no longer a democracy; it was now a plutonomy, a fancy way of saying, an economy that is ruled by the very wealthy.

The country was now being run by the top 1% of households in America who now owned more wealth than the bottom 95% of households combined.

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?

In this same memo, Citibank wrote, “The most potent and short-term threat would be societies demanding a more ‘equitable’ share of the wealth.”

As Michael Moore stated, this basically meant that their only fear was that of the peasants revolting. And the peasants surely did…

Do you remember that vote for change we all excitedly and ecstatically cried about back in November 2008? Yeah, the new black president one… You know, the Obama is here to save the peasants vote that sent us to the polls in droves.

What a victory that was for we the peasants…

Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, JP Morgan Chase & Morgan Stanley began to fill his coffers in a way that would assure some loyalty just incase he did win the presidency.

They bought favor to ensure that the Treasury Department remained just another arm of Goldman Sachs and that’s exactly what’s happened since Obama’s been in office.

No Change, No Hope, No Victory after all… for We the People!

Make no mistakes about it… This country is being run by Wall Street bullies and the wealthiest of Americans whose only goal is to keep the poor man poor… while retaining their own family fortunes.

And when all else fails and these global corporate giants need just a few more bucks for themselves, they have one final trump card… a card nicknamed ‘dead peasants insurance,’ by the companies that take out life insurance policies on their employees without ever having to inform them.

Companies including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie and Walt Disney… those bastards aren’t making enough money off their magical kingdom empire… they have to pump just a few more bucks out of dead employees. Isn’t that some shit?

The companies collect millions of dollars on low-level employees, while family members often have hard times gathering burial money to send them off peacefully. It’s capitalism at it’s best.

A few days after seeing the documentary I still felt sick to my stomach… I mean literally sick in a way that barely allowed me to keep my food down… and then I just about lost my food when I saw one of the most ignorant men in America take the stage at the BET Awards…

Yep, there he was singing and dancing for the other ignoramuses in attendance… Mr. Kanye West himself rocking a gold chain, so exaggerated, so costly, that it could’ve moved a family of five out of the back of the van they now call home and given them a decent shot at a real life.

I know… I know… it’s not Kanye’s responsibility… But it still makes me nauseous to see such a ludicrous display of gaudiness and wealth being splashed all over the screen keeping us all blind to the true plight of America’s downfall… Keeping us stupid… Keeping us def, dumb and blind.

According to the people that now own most of this countries wealth… It’s those types of brainwashing displays of wealth that keep the rest of us dreaming, believing that it’s within our reach… the American dream…

They truly don’t want us to wake up, only to discover that we can’t even get a job to meet our most basic human needs…

They are successfully erasing the imagery of poverty out of our minds.

You don’t believe me?

Drive down any downtrodden neighborhood on any given day and see the hundreds of people lined up just trying to get a decent meal…

Now go Google “food bank lines…” and see how many pictures come up… very few, very small lines…

Now tell me they’re not hiding the truth of what’s happening to this country from us…

After all… we’re just peasants… voiceless, emotionless, unworthy peasants!

Unwilling to demand change… unwilling to even speak out about it.

Citibank was right… we’d only ever be a “short-term” threat.

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.

Life and Times of an Undiagnosed Bipolar Puerto Rican

2010-06-23T10:03:00.000-07:00

Life and Times of an Undiagnosed Bipolar Puerto Rican

Literary Nobel Prize Winner George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live.”

It’s a passage that strikes me as one of the most honest and sincere that I’ve read. A passage that I myself try to emulate, while at the same time being one of the biggest hypocrites this world has ever seen.

You see, I can work the phones all day trying to save the life of a child… and I can walk outside five minutes later, find my way into an argument with any neighborhood thug, turn and threaten his life and do it all without blinking an eye.

I can march peacefully while holding a banner that reads, “Save Baby Sophia,” while at the same time grabbing a hold of another Puerto Rican “brother” that tries to cut in front of us at the parade… while telling him, “It’s not gonna happen… So don’t do it to yourself…”

I can have dinner with business men… and I can have dinner with stone cold killers… and feel just as at home sitting at both tables… the good and the bad, the protector and the pursuer, the lamb and the lion…

It’s all the same to me… It’s my very own hypocritical existence wherever I go.

There’s something very wrong about me in that sense… and I don’t think its mere anger management that I need… I think I’m displaying more bipolaristic sensibilities than I care to admit to myself…

And for the record… Yes, I just made up the word bipolaristic… Add it to your word dictionary.

I started to write a book called, “Crazy: A Year in the Life of an Undiagnosed Bipolar Puerto Rican…” You have to admit, the title is catchy as hell. But I had to stop, because the book was scary as hell… I don’t think the world is ready for that much honesty.

I began the journey of writing the book by taking one of those bipolar “self-diagnosis” tests on WebMD and writing about it.

Are you so irritable you shout at people and start fights or arguments?

Um, check… everyday, including at my daughters High School graduation ceremony when the people behind me wouldn’t shut the hell up and let me hear the keynote speakers. I almost missed my daughters march due to that one.

At times do you feel more self-confident than usual?

Um, double checks on this one… everyday… sometimes I think I’m the shit… sometimes I don’t think I’m shit…

Does your mind race out of control seemingly in a never ending cycle of thoughts?

Um, triple checks here… every night before I lay me down to sleep… especially when I have to figure out how to make a million things work during the worst economic recession in the history of this country…

Does that mean I’m crazy though?

The findings of my self-diagnosis basically told me to find the nearest psychiatric hospital and check myself in immediately… Do not stop at Go… Do not collect $200.00… Just find help.

Yet here I am still running the streets, looking for fights with disrespectful human beings, feeling unsure about my confidence level and letting my mind race in circles about every worrisome thing I can fit in my head at the same time.

And that’s just in one afternoon…

But isn’t this everyone? Or are you guys going to leave me out here alone on this one? Am I the only crazy one out here?

I’ll tell you who I blame more than the food companies, who’ve been inserting chemicals in the food we eat for so many years now, that we have a ridiculous amount of people on psychotropic drugs… I blame the old neighborhood.

I blame the neighborhood fellas for instilling in me the need to be so respected that at any sign of disrespect I lash out and attack like a shark being pulled into a boat with a metal hook stuck in his body… at that point, it’s either me or you… and I don’t want it to be me – so your ass is gonna get bit.

I lose all sensibilities and I forget that I am supposed to be more man than monster… more gentleman of peace, than fiend of war… more savior than destroyer.

In the book, Crazy, I write – “It doesn’t matter if you are undiagnosed or diagnosed with bipolar disorder. What matters is that you are mindful of its existence in your life so that you can control it any way you know how. Lord knows the medical geniuses haven’t found the cure for the damage the food companies have done to our bodies, both mental and physical…”

Why are five year old children being placed on more psychotropic drugs than ever before? Are the doctors just that much better at diagnosing now? Or is that we’ve given up on teaching coping mechanisms as opposed to just doping up our children? Or are the kickbacks from the drug companies just that great?

Why isn’t anyone being held accountable, from the food companies to the pharmaceutical companies to the gun manufacturers that continue to kill more people off both mentally and physically than every war we’ve ever fought?

Why do we just keep taking it?

I guess we’re all just a little too crazy to see with clarity what is being done to our society, to ourselves, to our children, to our futures… Or maybe we just don’t have time to care anymore because Farmville, Mafia Wars and Casper Martinez’s Facebook rants keep us plenty amused… plenty entertained… and plenty dead inside.

Whatever it is that’s making me so angry inside… I hope I can get it out of my system, before it gets the best of me… I’m an argument away from arguing with the wrong person…

It’s funny to me when I get so many messages from people saying I’m an inspiration, a healer, a savior… Even from as far away as the Philippines last week.

It’s funny to me because I can’t even figure out how to save myself – much less your child.

I guess we’re all just trying to find our own sanity in the midst of the madness.

Most just aren’t honest enough to admit to themselves… much less to the world!

When all else fails – go see a doctor, they’ve got a prescription for you. And it’ll only cost you a $20.00 co-pay and your sanity.

As for me – I’ll keep writing it out of my system.

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.

Pride and Prejudice

2010-06-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

Pride and Prejudice

There is an unknown author who once wrote, “We are each burdened with prejudice; against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them.”

So much for me ever being knighted into nobility, for I will forever remain prejudice against one group of people… that group being spics.

In all honesty, I haven’t had a problem with the word since the Irish kid (Danny) spit it out of his mouth in my direction in the 4th or 5th grade. It led to a fistfight and although he was bigger than me, I accidentally knocked him onto a bottle cutting his arm all up, ending the scuffle and declaring me victorious by default.

After that day, I never had a problem with the word – understanding that if it was used in a derogatory manner towards me, I’d stand and defend the honor of mi gente…

But then, what was there to defend once I grew into a little bad ass spic myself and had no honor in the way I carried myself into my late teens and early twenties?

I was the embodiment of a little spic, running around town, disrespecting everyone, robbing anything that wasn’t nailed down and believing that I had every right to do so… just because I felt like it.

Simply put… I wasn’t only a spic… I was a next level spic!

This weekend I experienced the beauty of being Latino, while at the same time experiencing the most disturbing side of our people… Yeah, the spics…

It was an emotional rollercoaster filled with love and hate, sometimes in the same five-minute span.

As I walked up 3rd Avenue towards 116th Street, I was overcome with the feeling of belonging as I was awash in a sea of red, white and blue…

The pride, the beautiful people, the Salsa, Reggaeton and Big Pun blaring from seemingly every corner on every block for miles around…

And the food… oh… the sweet heavenly smell of fried everything, from the empanadas y pastillios to the papa de rellenos y accapurias…

I had high hopes for this festival, being that it was the first time I’d ever stepped foot onto the concrete of El Barrio for the event.

But then I started hearing the spics… and they were everywhere…

“Yo ma, if you let me hit that… I’ll turn you out like the trick you are…” “F you beeyatch… you ain’t that cute anyway…” And x-rated things I’d never be able to repeat…

And then I heard mi gente… the laughter of children, the “Weeeeepa’s,” y, “Baya!! Boricuas…”

Then I saw the spics… “Fight, fight, fight…”

And then I saw mi gente: the baby with the “Got Marrow” sticker gently placed there by Aiesha who was with the Urban Latino Familia working hard to spread the word about 6-month-old baby Sophia’s plight to find a bone marrow donor of Latino descent.

I felt good, I felt bad… I felt happy, I felt sad… I felt like I was experiencing a Dr. Seuss existence with all of the colorful imagery blowing by me… both positive and negative…

It was some ride, let me tell you.

But overall, I’ll be honest and say I left feeling more prejudiced than proud that night…

The next morning I made my way over to 47th and 5th Avenue with a new friend, breast cancer survivor Vivian Rivera, who although is still healing from her own life or death battle, found the pride and heart to come out and march with the Urban Latino Familia and Hispanic Society of the MTA in support of Baby Sophia…

Unfortunately, within the first two-minutes of being there… I argued with a disrespectful cop and saw thirty Latin Kings & Queens standing on the corner looking for trouble way too early in the damn morning… They’d find their trouble later in the day while being handcuffed and hauled away by an all too happy NYPD.

I couldn’t help but allow the feelings of disgust from the day before to come flooding back like a thirty-foot wave in a Tsunami.

What the hell was I doing here again?

I just wrote a blog telling the world I didn’t believe in the false pride, the corruption of the Galos Corporation and National Puerto Rican Day Parade Inc.

I wrote, “This man here sees no reason to raise the Puerto Rican flag in celebration…” I spoke about the lack of loyalty and support… But then life decided to teach me a lesson about both…

I was asked to help raise awareness about Baby Sophia Lopez’s fight for her life… and I realized that there was support and loyalty in my own camp… And my Rebel Radio family, Trig One and Liza Marie never hesitated when we found out a banner for the baby would cost us a few hundred dollars… We went to work and we made things happen in a relatively short time…

So there I was getting ready to march with people who were proud to be there, had reason to be there… had reason to be proud… And we marched that banner right up 5th Avenue in front of hundreds of thousands of people who displayed that same pride… in every wave of their flag and every scream in their voices…

I saw the smiles on the faces of the future…

I saw beauty and purity in the smiles of children who couldn’t contain their own excitement when you made eye contact and waved a flag at them…

I saw love, I saw pride… I saw joy… I saw life and what it could be if we all respected our past, present and future… If we all respected each other…

I saw myself eating my words… and I smiled about it because I have no problem doing just that in an effort to show my support for a Latino familia in need.

I marched with my Urban Latino familia… I danced… I blew into that whistle like I was a crossing-guard directing our children safely into school each morning… I high-stepped and strutted my way down 5th Avenue with tears of joy inside knowing that someone in that crowd looked deeply into the eyes of Baby Sophia’s picture and realized that she could be their child.

That there was no true pride in just standing on the sidelines… that the truest pride would come from an action… a step forward to help save a child’s life… an extending of your own heart in order to help another…

And in the end, I put away my prejudice and I found my pride in the moment. And as the rain began to fall down upon me as we reached the end… I was overjoyed… I was truly happy… I was fulfilled in another mission complete…

I was proud to be Latino… Proud to walk amongst mi gente… Proud to stand for something!

Visit www.getswabbed.com today… and stand for something…

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.

Photos Courtesy of Francisco Reyes @ www.mamboso.net and Jenuine Focus and Aiesha Engineer

Yo Soy Nuyorican… But Not Like You

2010-06-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yo Soy Nuyorican… But Not Like You

As we prepare to celebrate our Puerto Ricaness and all of its beautiful intricacies this weekend at the 2010 Puerto Rican Day Parade along Fifth Avenue, I can’t help but wonder if anyone even cares about the struggles – both past and present – of our people…

On any given Sunday in the past history of the parade you might’ve been marching behind the Latin King and Queen Nation who pretended to be an organization for the people, all the while killing their own brothers over drug deals gone badly.

This Sunday you might find yourself marching behind a group of self-professed, self-titled Taínos who are no more peaceful than the conquistadors of Christopher Columbus who cut Yucayeke (village) boys in half and fed the bodies of Taíno babies to their dogs.

I know… it’s a strong statement which makes us all sick to our stomachs.

But the problem is, there is truth behind my words, as I’ve heard one of these self-appointed Taíno chieftains threaten to pull out his glock-nine on anyone he deems an enemy of his people.

I guess he wants to ensure there will be no more genocide under his watch.

The only difference is that the Taínos only responded to violence, never perpetrated it.

To me personally, the Puerto Rican Day Parade is as representative of Latino people as the “Being Latino” Facebook fan page.

Which is to say it serves no real purpose, has no real sense of direction and merely serves as a mirage to make us all feel accomplished. When the truth is we have a long way to go before we should ever dream of raising a triumphant flag of our own red, white and blue design.

Why would I say the PR Parade doesn’t represent me in anyway? Well for one thing, my daughters aren’t represented by the half-naked girls walking around with Puerto Rican flags covering their overtly protruding breasts… barely fourteen years old with enough Sazón to season fifty pernils.

And although a great majority of young Latino males are in desperate need of male role models to guide them into adulthood. I refuse to believe that those showing off their Puerto Rican flag boxer shorts and do-rags are any representation of the next generation of Latino leaders we’ll surely have to find in order to be represented properly in the future of government and corporate America.

The Latino politicians who wave atop $50,000 floats certainly aren’t representing the communities they were voted in to improve upon…

And who the hell keeps inviting the man who changed the laws to be mayor, “Moneybags Bloomberg,” to this event every year? He certainly is no friend to the Latinos in New York, though he certainly puts on a great act every year complete with straw hat and guayabera.

Much like everything else in this world, the Puerto Rican Day Parade has become a big business trying to grab hold of the billions of dollars Latinos spend each year.

As such… the Galos Corporation and the National Puerto Rican Day Parade Inc., have secured the best spots along the parade route for the big money investors, while people trying to spread messages of hope and survival are priced completely out of the parade.

Case in point, the DKMS, can’t even afford a float or a banner to promote its lifesaving efforts for six-month-old Bronx Latina, Sophia Lopez who is in desperate need of a bone marrow donor of Latino descent.

She will certainly die without a match being found… and as she prepares to enter the hospital, possibly for the last time, no one has stepped up to assist in these life-saving promotional efforts.

There is a very real chance that a match could be found in the two-million Latinos expected to cover the parade route. But apparently, Sophia’s life comes behind the hottest reggaetón band whose record label can afford the float, so the young, half-naked little ladies in attendance will show the world just how much Sazón a 14-year-old has.

Are you starting to understand why I don’t exactly feel represented by this parade?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be proud of our heritage, our legacy, where we’ve been and where we’re going.

But during a time when Latino support and loyalty seems to be non-existent or a very rare find.

During a time when Latinos are flunking out of school at close to 60 percent in many districts in New York.

During a time when we’re suffering from obesity, drug addiction, poverty, homelessness, mental health disorder and many levels of abuse in the home.

During a time when it’s almost illegal to be Latino in some parts of the country…

This man here sees no reason to raise the Puerto Rican flag in celebration.

My loyalty is to humanity…

And when I see so many Latinos failing to show humanity in the simplest way to a six-month-old Latina baby… I see no reason to show solidarity in that. No reason to show my pride in something I’m certainly not proud of. Maybe next year…

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 Unwritten Life

2010-06-01T07:48:00.000-07:00

The Unwritten Life

If I had a dollar for every time someone sent me a message posing the question, “How do I get published?” I’d have about $107.00.

And while I don’t consider the question to be a nuisance or a waste of my time, it is a very difficult question for me to answer. Because honestly, there is no right or wrong answer, no formulas that will guarantee you success and no secrets that only published authors share while trying to keep the next best writers locked out of the literary world.

What I can share with you is that becoming published requires more patience than your mother had to have with you not to beat you at the dinner table every time you refused to eat your vegetables – which for me, was every single time I sat at the table – right up to present day.

That’s right, I’ve never eaten a vegetable and I’m damn proud of that little known fact.

However, what I lacked in the taste buds department I more than made up for in the patience to someday see my story – in black and white – in some type of binding for a broad audience, preferably the entire world, to read.

It took me almost five years to become published, and even then I was only discovered by a friend of a friend who knew someone (Max Nomad) who owned a very small publishing company in Virginia Beach called Bohemian Griot Publishing.

I still recall the first phone conversation I had with Max when he said into the phone something to the effect of, “I don’t know how to market a book like this… but I know this story needs to be shared with the world… let’s meet…”

And the rest as they say is Latino literary history.

Prior to that fateful call though, I recollect taking the last $300.00 out of the bank to drive to New York to attend the BEA Conference at the Jacob K. Javits Center. The promise of the Book Expo of America and this particular conference was that you’d get to have your manuscript reviewed by a real publisher, literary agent or editor.

There I stood with a nearly completed manuscript titled, “Next Stop: Growing up in the Kingsbridge Section of the Bronx,” – the name would later be changed by Nomad – and a firm belief that the stories of my old neighborhood deserved a grand platform.

I believed in the deepest part of my soul that the stories of survival and the memoriam to those who didn’t make it out deserved to be documented for an eternity. And no one could tell me that my gut instinct was wrong.

These were the unwritten stories of our lives… and I wanted them to be cemented in the concrete of literary greatness for generations to come.

My hands shook when I handed the manuscript to the first editor and after browsing through the first few pages he promptly closed it and said, “I can’t market this,” and sent me on my way.

I quickly got into line number two to hear virtually the same thing… and as I walked up to Sharlene Martin of Martin Literary Management on my third and final try, my spirits had already been crushed and my hopes of finding anyone to publish me that afternoon had completely vanished.

And while Sharlene didn’t provide me with a publishing deal that afternoon, she did provide me with one thing the others did not… she provided me with kinds words of hope when she said, “Your stories seem to have potential, just polish up the manuscript and don’t give up.”

But that’s what I did at that very moment… I gave up… I quit… I accepted my fate as a failed writer.

While I sat on the sidewalk outside the Javits Center, for what seemed like an eternity, eating the only thing I could afford to eat – a dirty water dog – before trekking back to Virginia Beach, the only feelings I could muster were those of defeat.

I’d let everyone down… but at least I had the courage to try, right?

I tried to look at the bright side of Sharlene’s words, but the fact that I’d spent my families last few dollars trying to “make it,” was enough to cloud the bright side of anything in a wall of tears.

The manuscript for “Next Stop,” sat collecting dust for an entire year before a friend of Nomad’s overheard me talking about the forgotten tales I’d written at a beach party and offered to pass it on for review.

So you see… there is no great secret to being published… In my case, I still believe it was fate. And to this day I still believe that the lives of my friends who died on the streets of New York deserved to be shared with the world, if for no other reason, than to prove that they existed in some time or space.

And so if I had to give you just one bit of advice, I’d tell you to write a manuscript that is so honest it will literally hurt you to write it.

Moreover, that even if you’re writing a novel, take all of the pain and pleasure you’ve ever experienced in life and pour it onto the pages as if your only hope of survival is to confess the truths for what they are… the truth… the sad, lonely, happy, funny, unapologetic truths of life. Because I for one don’t want to read anything less than that.

Understand that your life, the lives of those around you deserve to be documented… deserve to be written… deserve to be told by us for future generations to experience.

“Next Stop: Growing up Wild Style in the Bronx,” was never a marketable book. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t an important book.

And for the last year I’ve blamed everyone and their mother for not supporting and purchasing the book. Only to come to the realization through conversations with filmmakers like Franc Reyes and Mr. Moe that it was never the audiences fault.

How can you buy a book that you don’t even know exists?

And so in that regard we are still very much invisible to the mainstream markets of America.

Only this time, there is no need to give up… but instead to write more books and document more stories in hopes that eventually the market will find us.

Next Stop is officially going out of print on May 27, 2010.

But the book has its place in history as the first memoir by a Puerto Rican from the Bronx to be published by a major publishing house. And though Simon & Schuster never really pushed this book, my editor Sulay Hernandez fought hard to allow it to see the light of day on the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble and Borders.

I was fortunate enough to count amongst my fans people like Casper Martinez, Luis Guzman, Rosie Perez, Ramon Rodriguez, Luis Antonio Ramos and Urban Latino Magazine’s founder Jorge Cano-Moreno. But more importantly teens across America that saw themselves in the pages and questioned the paths they were traveling in life…

A few even altered their paths to find their own success in life.

Doors opened, friendships were built and new legacies were secured. In the end, my gut instinct was right… Our unwritten lives… deserved to be written.

To Be Continued

"It's the raw and brutally honest portrayal of a violent youth who walks through fire in order to find himself." -- Linda Nieves-Powell, author of Free Style

A Lifetime of Shooting the Bronx

2010-05-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

A Lifetime of Shooting the Bronx

Author Michael Crichton writes in his book, Timeline, that, “Professor Johnston often said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree.”

Much to the credibility of that passage, it’s as if our own Latino history has been shamefully and unapologetically stripped from us in the curriculum of the American classroom, in order to keep us from realizing that we’re often the progeny of prominence.

We’re instead force-fed education about the most powerful families in America from the Kennedys and Vanderbilt’s, to the Du Ponts’ and Rockefellers’. But the half-truths always seem to omit any traces of greatness in the lineages of our own Latino and African ancestry.

The truly ostentatious tales about our own descendants only survive through the spoken word and often times are lost over time, without ever having the opportunity to be documented properly for future generations to read about.

I had the pleasure of hearing one of these great tales from Lorraine Montenegro, the mother of famed Hip Hop photographer and author Joe Conzo Jr. (Born in the Bronx) about their families history of not only being survivors but saviors.

It was the story of Lucas Lopez, a Sephardic Jew and slave to the Spaniards who voyaged to Puerto Rico with the promise of freedom. Yet in keeping with the theme of broken promises the Sephardic Jews of Puerto Rico were never granted freedom and were forced to eventually shield their identities to avoid persecution by the conquistadors.

And while the life of Lucas isn’t literarily documented, the legend of his courageous act of saving a runaway slave named Mama Mangala from certain death at the hands of drowning is a tale that’s been passed down for generations.

It’s a tale which embodies the legacy of the great family lineage and compliments the later heritage of Dr. Evelina Lopez-Antonetty, Conzo’s grandmother, known as the, “Hell lady of the Bronx,” for her tireless efforts in serving the underserved communities of the South Bronx in the midst of the worst times the boroughs ever seen. A time when the Bronx wasn’t burning… it was burnt… a time when Bronx residents had been abandoned and left to find their own means of survival.

Lopez-Antonetty became a legendary activist eventually founding United Bronx Parents, Inc., an agency which continues to serve the South Bronx under the direction of Conzo’s mother; Lorraine Montenegro... a continued history of survival and saviors.

And while Conzo’s family was saving the South Bronx from itself, Joe was walking around with a camera visually documenting a new movement being birthed out of the ash… a nameless movement created by the youth looking for an outlet for their anger and aggression.

A movement which saw storytellers such as Grandmaster Caz and Melle Mel reciting rhymes in the spoken word just as past ancestors had done… reciting stories of pain, hopelessness, drugs and despair.

It was a movement that helped Afrika Bambaatta of the Black Spades street gang, gain knowledge of self eventually spawning the legendary Zulu Nation which generated the principles of peace, unity, love and having fun.

A movement which witnessed DJ Kool Herc host the first official Hip Hop jam at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx…

It was Hip Hop… a now billion dollar industry that very rarely, if ever, looks back to pay homage to its own impressive history. And one which owes a great debt of gratitude not only to the aforementioned pioneers, but to those such as Joe Conzo, Ernie Paniccioli and Jamel Shabazz who were insightful enough to visually document the movement. One which would’ve had a difficult time capturing the essence of itself without those visual works of art that their photography now affords the history books.

When I met with Conzo recently I asked him how he felt to finally be honored by clothing company Sedgwick & Cedar with a t-shirt line paying homage to his decades of photography.

Of course I was looking for a reply in the vein of, “It’s about time…” But instead Joe spoke softly and stated, “You know me, I’m humble… I’m just a kid from the South Bronx whose been fortunate enough to travel all over the world with my work. I’ve been able to visit Korea, Amsterdam and I’ll be going to Germany in September where they’re releasing my book (Born in the Bronx) in German. I’m honored and humbled at the same time...”

He went on to tell me that’s he’s proud of the company for doing things right. And in light of recent events with the Hip Hop museum slighting the pioneers, Joe is happy that Sedgwick & Cedar has enough foresight and respect for the pioneers of the culture to bring them in as business partners on their clothing line.

Hip Hop scholar and visual artist Koe Rodriguez was instrumental in brokering the deal with Sedgwick & Cedar to not only bring Conzo’s work to life on clothing, but also the work of Shabazz and Paniccioli ensuring that Hip Hop heads across the globe will be rocking the realest visual documentations of what it was really like to be a part of the earliest days of Hip Hop.

Just three days ago, Joe Conzo Jr. and his father, Joe Conzo Sr., a Latin music historian and one time confidant of Tito Puente were honored with the creation of a scholarship named after the father son duo at the Rafael Hernandez Middle School in the South Bronx, assuring that no matter where Joe goes in the world, he’ll always be tied to his roots back home.

The New York Times called Conzo Jr., “The Man Who Took Hip Hop’s Baby Pictures,” I’m just honored to call the man a good friend.

He’s certainly carrying a heavy family legacy on his shoulders. And in keeping with the tradition of his bloodline and his ancestor Lucas saving that runaway slave, Joe Conzo Jr. has proven to be the savior of what could’ve been a long forgotten about history of Latinos and African Americans running from the slavery of circumstance… and freeing themselves through creative expression.

We should all be grateful to the ancestors that Conzo was there to capture it all with his camera while shooting the Bronx.

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.

Photos Courtesy of Francisco Reyes @ www.mamboso.net

The Silent Brutality of False Love

2010-05-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

The Silent Brutality of False Love

A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

On the outer layer of this quote, it’s nothing more than an analogy for a mother who cares more to feed those around her than to eat herself. But if you dig deeper into the quote and study it for a moment, you’d understand that it houses the essence of womanhood and the purest definition of what role women play on this earth as the caretakers of everyone and everything.

In honor of Mother’s Day I wanted to speak out against one of the most heinous crimes against humanity… that crime being domestic violence.

In my household growing up I thankfully didn’t witness domestic violence, though my mother was a victim of it’s effects at the hands of the sperm donor who contributed to my creation… a poor excuse for a man who talked more with his hands than his slurred drunken stupor of a speech.

My mother, in keeping with the strength that she’s displayed throughout her life, simply walked away from the abuse after birthing my brother as a teenager. To this day she’s unquestionably the strongest woman I’ve ever met. And I’m grateful to her that she found the inner-strength to walk away when she did, thus sheltering us from a painful everyday existence that millions of people call a normal family life.

Happy Mother’s Day Mom… I love you!

Unfortunately domestic violence was very much a part of my world outside of the home, where the machismo dominated world of Kingsbridge introduced me to that, “Keep your bitch in check,” mentality that is still very prevalent today, perhaps even more so.

I hit a girl for the first time when I was fifteen-years-old and I still carry the guilt around in my heart to this day, something I often speak to the youth about. It’s a guilt you simply never escape and one made worse for me due to the fact that I now have three daughters of my own, whom I’d give my life to protect from ever experiencing this type of damage.

Sadly, the statistics say that one in three females will experience domestic violence in their lifetime… meaning I might have to kill another man one day for doing the exact same thing I did as a youngster.

When I close my eyes and think about the abuse I inflicted on the young girls I dated as a teenager, I vividly recall trying to pull one of my ex-girlfriends out of cab, through the open window – by her hair – her crime: wanting to go out with friends on a Friday night.

If it were a movie, the soundtrack would’ve been of her screams coupled with the laughter I heard in the background, compliments of my boys on Bailey Avenue… You see in our neighborhoods this was not only acceptable behavior, it was expected behavior.

And it’s these kinds of memories that are an inescapable part of my life, my life sentence for my unjust behavior against young women.

The mental, verbal and physical abuse we expose our future mothers to is as much responsible for the declination of our communities and the destruction of our families as anything else discussed behind closed doors.

So why on God’s green earth would I put myself out there and expose myself as a batterer?

Well for one thing, I haven’t laid my hands on a woman in an inappropriate manner since my first daughter’s birth – she’ll be nineteen-years-old come January.

And secondly, because I have a duty and responsibility to speak out against the atrocious and damaging behavior that continues to victimize those we should be protecting the most… our women.

I also speak out against domestic violence in hopes of raising awareness amongst young men about the true effects of this type of behavior and how their actions will follow them; even haunt them for a lifetime in hopes of dissuading them from participating in this barbaric behavior.

The statistics are staggering with an estimated 1.3 million women falling victim to domestic violence each year. And an estimated 4 to 10 million children witnessing domestic violence annually, forcing them into a life they now see as normal, which leads to repeated behavior and a never-ending cycle of violence against women.

At its worst, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that three women and one man are murdered by their intimate partners each day. Meaning each day four people are murdered due to a false love gone horribly wrong. In 80% of the cases, of a woman killing her male spouse, there was domestic violence perpetrated by the man.

How’s that for a thin line between love and hate?

And while all of these statistics prove that we’re certainly failing to protect our women. Of far greater concern to me are the statistics you never hear about. The silent sufferers who never dare to reach for the phone, who don’t have the strength to seek help or to walk away as my mother did, for fear that they’ll become one of the three women murdered every day in the United States.

Of far greater concern to me is the lack of the communities concern when they turn a blind-eye or deaf ear to women being beaten on a daily basis in plain view of the world. Are we still simply standing around laughing? Are we turning our television volume up in order to pretend we don’t hear the woman next door crying out for help? Are we acting as if we don’t see that young girl being choked on the corner by her overzealous boyfriend who’s being told by his homeboys to, “Keep his bitch in check?”

At some point we all have to get involved and we all have to become a part of the solution or run the risk of being a part of a seemingly never-ending problem. At some point we have to realize that if we don’t step in, speak up and speak out, that we’re just as much at fault as the man actually doing the beating. And at some point we have to realize that most men who beat their women often turn their anger and aggression on their children next.

In the past month, a far more horrific and disturbing trend has reared its monstrous head in which two infants have been murdered by their divorcing fathers. Last month in San Bernardino County, Stephen Garcia killed his eight-month-old baby Wyatt. And a few weeks later in Meridian Idaho, Nicholas Bacon, shot and killed his nine-month-old baby Bekm.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence is speaking out about what it sees as a legal system that leaves it at the discretion of the judge to either believe or discount a victim’s story of abuse, regardless of the evidence presented.

In the case of baby Wyatt, court transcripts state that the, “judges reacted with disbelief when his mother Katie Tagle presented them with evidence of death threats against her son by his father.” Shortly thereafter baby Wyatt was murdered.

It was another tragic end to the brutality of love gone wrong.

For information about domestic violence please visit the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and get involved. You honestly might help save a life.

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 Cost of Chasing a Dream

2010-05-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Cost of Chasing a Dream

I can still remember the conversation as if it were yesterday… and even though it seems like two decades ago, it was less than two years ago, sometime in late November of 2008.

I was sitting in my beautiful sports car, outside the beautiful townhome I lived in with family in Virginia Beach, the place I’d escaped to in order to forget about all the hopelessness that had consumed me in my old Kingsbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, New York in the early 90’s.

There I was speaking on the phone with my very good friend – my sister – Lynx Garcia, telling her about my plan to move back to New York City to chase all of my dreams. These dreams of mine, which seemed to be right in front of me, daring me to reach out a little bit further to meet them all up close and personal.

My marriage, according to me, had failed… and my daughters, the honor roll, competition cheerleading all-stars that they were, would be fine without me in the household. I’d help raise them to be intelligent, compassionate human beings capable of acquiring their own dreams when they found the time just right… I rationalized that even my two-year old wouldn’t miss me much, as she didn’t really know me well enough to miss me.

So my time to start chasing my dreams became right then and there. But not before Lynx spoke her peace into the phone. And although I can’t speak verbatim as to what she said that winter evening, it was something to the affect of, “Be careful my brother… you know sometimes when we find that ultimate happiness in one facet of our lives, other things in our lives begin to go wrong. We can’t have it all; the world just doesn’t work that way. There is a certain balance to life…”

Damn, she couldn’t have been more right had she been cheating by staring directly into a crystal ball.

To put it blunt… I now believe that my sister was trying to share with me a wisdom she’d learned throughout her own journey in life. And I now believe it to be true… you can’t have it all… all the time. It’s just not the true balance of life. There is a cost that must be paid in every measure of life.

Of course, I do wish that Lynx’s words wouldn’t have been so prophetic, so quickly. It would’ve been nice to have seen things collapse around me just a little bit slower than what they actually did once I touched down in the city that never sleeps in December 2008.

Because almost immediately after arriving in New York City, one day after Christmas, I saw projects failing for no apparent reason, I saw once opened doors – closing in a seemingly, “Oh shit, he really moved back to New York,” kind of fashion… I had partners tell me they no longer wanted to collaborate… But even worse, I lost close friends for reasons that I still don’t really understand to this day.

It was as if the ancestors and the universe were simultaneously trying to say, “Ivan, you done fucked up now kid…”

People I respected told me to never look back and others I respected equally told me to dig deep into my past to find the answers to my future. Confusion began to set in and I fell into a deep depression; you know the kind that Latinos don’t ever like to speak about…

The kind of depression we’re not allowed to speak about… because it weakens our position in life, or at the very least weakens the perceptions others have of us.

I stopped answering my phone for weeks and even months at a time…

I stopped communicating with the outside world and at times it even became next to impossible to pick up the phone to say goodnight to my daughters – the only reason I was even trying to hold on at that point.

For all intensive purposes I no longer existed in the real world… I was a walking shell of my former self who had given up on life as he believed it to be. I questioned if I’d come back to New York to become another statistic while Frank Sinatra’s, “If I can make it there… I’ll make it anywhere… New York,” verse played on heavy rotation in my head.

Did I really come back here to fail… to give up on life… or even worse to swan dive off the Brooklyn Bridge and die here?

Shit with my luck, I would’ve survived the dive and become a paraplegic. The thought was enough to prevent me from such a cruel fate – well that along with the vision of my little three angels.

I had to answer no to all of those negative questions burning inside of me… I had to find the will and the strength to fight my way through another day of nothingness, knowing in my heart that I’d come back to New York in search of a dream – even if it was now clouded in a nightmare I never saw coming – even if the cost had become the weight of the United States deficit to China…

Little by little I had to dig myself out of what at times was a self-imposed coffin now burying me and my dream alive.

I began working with the youth in a writing workshop, lecturing, freelance writing more often and using the radio show on Urban Latino Radio to find my voice again… my confidence, my dream.

The inspiration that so many said I was providing to them, began to find its own way back to me in return and my darkest days began to lighten up a bit. The sun was finally shining again and my focus came back to me a little bit at a time… freeing me to finally see my dreams again.

There was a great deal of people around me who were never wise to the silent pain I was enduring. We’re not allowed to speak about such a taboo as depression. I recall people even telling me how good I looked and how much I looked like I was living it up in New York… They simply had no idea what chasing my dreams had done to my insides.

That’s the thing about life – sometimes we have to take the time to take a closer look at our friends and family members. Sometimes we have to ask questions about what’s really going on in their lives, if we’re ever to know how they truly are deep down inside.

Let’s stop pretending that all of the issues going on in society are normal. Let’s stop pretending that war, poverty, violence, hunger and an economy that allows the richest people in the world to get richer by placing bets around us losing our homes is normal… Let’s stop pretending that, “It is what it is…”

Because I’m here to tell you that it really shouldn’t be…

What happened to supporting one another as we chase our dreams? What happened to taking on some of your brothers or sisters burden to help push them along?

What happened to the love? Did it simply become too costly? Have we all just given up on each other?

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.

Brown… is the new Black

2010-04-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

Brown… is the new Black

Over the last several weeks I’ve joked with my co-hosts, Liza Marie and Steve “Trig” Cancino, on our radio show (Rebel Radio) about the fact that I’m often mistaken for being more Italian, than Puerto Rican.

With my pale complexion, spiky hair – ala MTV’s Jersey Shore – and “fuggedaboutit” accent, I’ve been asked about my Guido affiliations on many occasions. And while it’s something I laugh about, it’s not something I purposely set out to carry as a badge of honor. The truth is I’m proud of my Latino heritage and all of its rich cultura and history.

And although the verdict is out on how much of my family comes from the Canary Islands by way of my mother’s ancestry, the Betancourt’s. And just how much of my birth fathers (Sanchez) ancestry comes from Puerto Rico, I know in my heart and soul that I carry more of the Taino spirit in me than the conquistador spirit coming out of Arizona over the last few months.

To divide and conquer: It’s as if a few lawmakers in Arizona have found a way to play a modern day version of cowboys and Indians.

The cowboys are people like Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, first introduced to us by Soledad O’Brian in her Latino in America series – To bad Arpaio didn’t catch our attention back then. We were to busy crying about how Soledad didn’t feature enough Latino Harvard graduates to pay attention to the overtly racist town and it’s policies, now laws, that she was trying to enlighten us about.

But we really should’ve been paying attention to Arpaio, who is now being investigated for many civil rights violations.

In regards to being an unapologetic racist, Arpaio comes second only to his white supremacist buddy and lawmaker, Russell Pearce, who actually wrote the controversial SB1070 bill just passed into law in Arizona.

Cowboy number two – Pearce has made no excuses for his revulsion of Mexicans, Blacks, Israelis and even Jews and was temporarily looked down upon in 2006 for forwarding an email to his supporters by way of the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

Luckily for him, being a racist in Arizona is no political career ending crime.

But even more disturbing is the fact that he’s received and shown support for a man named JT Ready, an outright neo-fascist who took part in a neo-Nazi demonstration in which a Mexican and Israeli flag were set on fire in Omaha, Nebraska.

Just another good ole’ boy barbeque complete with hate-core music, slam dancing and burning swastikas adorning the backdrop of America... which more and more each day feels as if it should really be spelt AmeriKKKa.

Again… there’s no issue with any of this blatant racism in Arizona – a state which also made sure there was no existence of a Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday until an economic boycott, the loss of 166 conventions and subsequent loss of an NFL Superbowl, finally forced them to approve the holiday. Not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of their economy.

The last of the cowboys is actually a cowgirl, albeit the most dangerous of this ruthless Arizona posse…

Cowgirl Jan Brewer, also known as the most dimwitted chick next to Sara Palin, also known as the Governor of Arizona… also known as the white women who defied the big bad black President of the United States, actually became the most dangerous of the posse when she signed this controversial law (SB1070) into effect on Friday, April 23, 2010.

A law which basically makes it probable cause to have any semblance of skin tone that could be considered, illegal, Latino, Native American, light-skinned black… you get the picture.

And if you’re stopped for being any shade of brown, you’d better have your birth certificate, driver’s license, social security, passport, baptism records and a letter from your mother that reads… “Officer, please don’t arrest, detain or beat my son or daughter… I swear they were born in America… plopped right out of my belly right here in the good ole’ U.S of A!”

For those saying this law will not affect anyone in this country legally. Think again… because just hours before the bill even passed, a man only willing to give his first name as Abdon, was already arrested and taken to the INS building even though he showed his commercial drivers license and a social security card.

He was only released after his wife retrieved his birth certificate from their home and was able to prove he was a citizen of the United States. (story here)

I have to wonder and pose the question to my audience, whether or not a white president could’ve stopped this bill from being signed into law with a simple phone call…

I can’t help but believe that if President Obama had been Bush’s or Clinton’s skin tone while making this phone call to Jan Brewer… that perhaps the pen-slinging cowgirl would’ve holstered her weapon and not spilt the ink on that paper which now spells racism for this country and a plunge back fifty years in time… when it was illegal to be Black in America.

Obama was quoted as saying, “As a nation, as a people, we can choose a different future – a future that keeps faith with our history, with our heritage, and with the hope that America has always inspired in the hearts of people all over the world…”

The cowboys and cowgirls of Arizona would be wise to draw on that past history in understanding that while they may be able to slaughter us for their own political gain… they’ll never be able to silence our ancestors… and they’ll never be able to enslave our spirit.

Brown may very well be the new black to those still trying to bind us. But they’d do well to remember their own immigration status and passage to this country… If they’re not original Native Americans… they’re all walking on stolen land.

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.

Time to Pull Up Your Pants Son

2010-04-19T14:05:00.000-07:00

Time to Pull Up Your Pants Son

I think it’s safe to say that when a school celebrates a makeshift holiday called, “Pull up your pants day,” we’ve lost the battle concerning our youth being respectful in school.

Plantation High School – who the hell named this school – in South Florida celebrated the day in honor of a speech President Barack Obama gave back in November 2008 in which he stated, “Brothers should pull up their pants.”

A local Wal-Mart supplied the school with 200 free belts to help the cause. And teachers said there were no incidents, adding that all of the students were on their best behavior.

Reading the article, reminded me about a statement I recently heard activist NYOIL make on Hot 97’s Street Soldiers a few weeks back. When he spoke about how respectable the young men and women behaved while participating in his Blackbird Fly Conference and Gala Event.

The young ladies dressed like princesses and queens in beautiful gowns, complete with crowns. And the young men who accompanied them dressed like young royalty, looking as sharp as ever in their rented tuxedos. It’s no wonder they carried themselves with a great deal of pride as they walked around.

If you’ve ever dressed like this yourself you’d understand that it affords you the ability to walk with your head held extra high, feeling like a million bucks, dressed in a way that often reflects on the inside who we’d always like to be on the outside.

Dressing in such a glamorous way often causes people to stop and stare, to pay attention to us as we enter or exit a room… and as a first impression, there is no better way to say, “I respect myself and I expect you to respect me the same…”

So it’s of no great surprise that with the young men of this next generation walking around like penguins, in a clumsy-like shifting from side-to-side, trying to keep their pants up walk, they look every bit the buffoonish way they often seem to act.

They’re behavior is simply mimicking the dress code they’ve adopted from the penitentiary system.

I myself remember walking around my cell when I was 15-years-old without a belt and no shoe laces, trying to find another way to hang myself so that my mother wouldn’t beat me senseless for getting caught writing graffiti.

But for me there really wasn’t anything cool about it… And I never found a reason to bring that style home with me… granted my 12 hour bid wasn’t long enough for me to become accustomed to the fashion, but you get the meaning. I didn’t see being arrested as a badge of honor the way many do in our inner-cities.

Being a part of the Hip Hop generation often means we’re not quick to speak out against issues that can be perceived as, “Selling out…”

The Stop Snitching campaign is a wonderful example of just how far we’ll go to keep shut about behaviors killing our neighborhoods, because we don’t want to be seen as taking the side of the law, who is often seen as not on our side.

But there are times when we have to stand up and say, “Enough is enough…” And for me personally this is one of those times when I have to use my voice to make that statement.

I don’t believe in censorship of any kind, but I also shouldn’t have to walk down the street with my young daughters while staring at the ass or dirty draws of some young wannabe thug.

I don’t believe in policing what people wear, but I do believe in the indecency laws on the books that should prevent me as a father from having to stare at some young mans boxers.

I’m not interested in seeing if you’re wearing Calvin Klein, Fruit of the Loom, or Hanes underwear young brothers. It’s time for you to pick up your damn pants and have some respect for the young ladies and for that matter the older ladies in your community… As a mater of fact it’s time for you to have some respect for yourselves.

New York State Senator Eric Adams has recently launched a campaign to “Ban the Sag,” by placing six billboards all over Brooklyn that read, “Raise your pants… Raise your image,” and “We are better than this…” And frankly I agree not only with his message, but with his campaign to pass a bill that would make the practice of indecency in our streets illegal.

I understand that some might say this is just another way to invite aggressive policing into our communities. But in my humble opinion this isn’t about fashion, this is about asking our communities to dress appropriately and to respect the young ladies we have walking around these same neighborhoods we’re aiming to change for the better.

How can you have a daughter and think this is acceptable? And as a man in your community how can you condone a dress code that you know those emulating will never have a chance of being taken seriously… that they’ll never have a chance to land a decent job.

Make no mistake about it… this isn’t about dressing in a manner that we don’t believe to be fashionable. This is about combating a way of life that spells nothing but failure for those who adopt it for themselves.

This is about being a responsible adult… and telling the youth that they need to respect themselves enough to pull up their damn pants.

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.

La Mission… Is Our Reality

2010-04-12T15:50:00.000-07:00

La Mission… Is Our Reality

What is a dream if not for the realization that it’s achievable? And what reality is worth living in if all dreams are broken before ever having had the opportunity to manifest themselves into veracity?

One of my newest friends, Michael Holman, recently told me that the lie is that we’re lazy… the truth is that our dreams are often shattered leaving our spirits completely broken. This in turn leaves us in a state of hopelessness, a state many mistakenly perceive as laziness.

Over five years ago I decided to actively chase my own dream of becoming a published author.

But with no formal education as a writer and no connections to the publishing world I had no idea how I’d see this dream through to fruition…

Nevertheless, when the stories I fought so hard to share with the world made me the first Puerto Rican from the Bronx to sign a major publishing deal for a memoir… I realized that it was destiny dictating the importance of documenting where I came from.

It was destiny that ensured that if I ran hard and fast enough, I’d eventually catch up to my dreams and meet them up close and personal.

And to this day I continue to be gifted, not financially, but spiritually though networking encounters with others who’ve run just as hard to make their dreams their realities.

This past Friday (04/09/2010) was no exception when my friend Kay Shaw, Director of Strategic Partnerships for the National Black Programming Consortium, invited me to meet her good friend Peter Bratt and watch his powerful film, La Mission, starring his brother Benjamin Bratt.

I was elated because it was one of three films I really wanted to see last year at the New York International Latino Film Festival. But time wasn’t on my side back then and I wasn’t able to make the screenings.

Truth be told… I wasn’t supposed to see the film at that time. Because with all I was going through personally as a result of my relocation back to Bronx to save the hood, I don’t think I could’ve handled the depth of emotion I felt when I finally watched it the other night.

As it was, I almost walked out of the theater twice because of the emotional exercise the film was running me through.

La Mission, a film about the Mission District of San Francisco where Peter and Benjamin grew up, so intelligently deals with many of the issues minorities face on a daily basis. The only word I could use to describe it would be genius.

It’s simply and without question… a work of Genius!

During the Q&A after the film, Peter Bratt spoke bluntly when he mentioned that some people have asked him why he chose to tackle so many issues in one film. His answer revolved around the fact that many minority families deal with all of these issues on a daily basis.

At dinner later that night one of my first questions to Peter was, “How did you get so much content into two hours in such a seamless manner?”

And then I probably hit him in rapid fire succession with questions about the way he addressed homophobia, Latino machismo, black and brown relationships, a single father trying to raise his only son, a neighborhood that has issues with gang violence, alcoholism, the war overseas, domestic violence, the immigration problem… and I can go on and on.

He never really answered the question about how he covered all the bases in two hours, but it was more of a rhetorical anyway.

Plus, I’d only give away his secrets in this blog… so it was a good move on his part not to give me a direct answer.

But here I am several days later still wondering how one writer / director dealt with all of these issues in the span of one film, in a way that was so subtly informative that when the film was over, I remained stuck in my seat trying to process everything I’d just seen?

It was as if the powerful imagery I’d just viewed now wanted to reintroduce itself into my thoughts allowing me an opportunity to understand the power of what I’d just witnessed…

Furthermore I wondered how on earth Peter managed to capture it all in a way that couldn’t possibly draw cries of stereotyping, glorification of violence or any other mistake Latino filmmakers formulate when trying to share our painful stories of struggle and survival on the big screen?

When Peter asked me if I was going to eat anything for dinner I said, “To be honest… my nerves are shot…”

It was as if what I’d just observed on the screen made me realize that our stories can be told with dignity and pride without ever losing their authenticity… and it moved me in a way that this writer still can’t find the words to express in great enough detail.

There is a scene in the movie that has played itself over and over again in my head…

The scene depicts a fight in the middle of the street and just when it’s about to climax into an all out war, an elderly Native American man steps into the picture and says, “Nephew… that’s enough…”

Three simple words from an elder… order is restored, respect is displayed, and the spirituality of life is discovered.

It was a scene that sent tears streaming down my face instantaneously as I wished that this generation had enough respect for their elders to actually freeze and obey a command of, “Stop,” during a violent altercation.

Imagine if we respected our elders that much in the streets of Compton, the South Bronx, Chicago and the Mission District of San Francisco…

Imagine how beautiful our neighborhoods would be if we became neighbors again, if we respected our heritage, our history and our past greatness.

And it was during this process of imaging what kind of world that would be, which made me very emotional.

La Mission is a dream realized by two brothers wanting to tell a story about where they came from. And although I could sit here and talk about the brilliance of the acting – because it unquestionably was – I’d much rather prefer to spend these words writing about the brilliance of the Bratt brother’s dream being realized.

Moreover, how that dream can blossom into thousands of quality films by people of color who now have a blueprint to follow.

Marsha Norman said that, “Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.”

And with films like La Mission it becomes brilliantly apparent that sharing our souls with the world through writing and filmmaking allows us to realize our greatest dreams.

La Mission in life should always be to chase your dreams… and when you catch them, let them know they never stood a chance of escaping you when they took off running.

Because in the end… our dreams are worth living for!

Stay Brown…

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.

I’m Not a Man… Until I’m Free

2010-04-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

I’m Not a Man… Until I’m Free

I often wonder if my messages are being clouded by the reality that some of my audience now has this preconceived notion that I’m just plain angry, thus spewing unfounded rhetoric of nonsensical ramblings that I consider of the utmost importance for the future of our people…

And when I say OUR people, I’m speaking about the most undeserved humanity has to offer.

Yes, I write for Urban Latino Magazine. But the issues I literately conquer each week are issues that affect those I see as voiceless, those whose lack of education has not afforded them the intellect to voice their frustrations in forums like these.

I’m speaking to Blacks, Latinos and even lower class Caucasians who have fallen from middle-class to lower-class in the midst of the devastating economic recession that has more of us unable to afford to be treated with dignity by a justice system whose verdicts only fall in favor of those with deep pockets.

I’m speaking to those who have given up and allowed the system to brainwash them so-much-so that they have accepted without question their destinies of life in and out of privatized penitentiaries or maybe the lesser cruel outcome of death at the hands of their neighbors.

How brain dead does one have to be to willingly and without fight accept that type of a fate?

How much of a punk does one have to be to sit idly by and watch their communities plunge into the deepest pits of despair and desolation without ever lifting as much as a faint cry in angst?

So yes, I’m angry… I’m downright pissed off…

But I’m even more confused at how those so willing to fight one another over dirty looks and fictitious families disguised as gangs remain too afraid to stand up and fight for a positive shift in the socioeconomic conditions of their families, their neighbors and their communities.

Honestly, I’m damn ashamed of my generation’s lack of interest in improving the civil rights of our people.

And just one day after the 42nd Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I’m mortified that all “we as a people” have managed to do is dishonor his legacy, his life’s work and his untimely death.

For those not paying attention, the racism of Dr. King’s day has been replaced with the modern day form of slavery – that being classism.

The chains of our African American ancestors have been replaced with the silver bracelets (handcuffs) of police departments across the country who continues to lock us up and throw away the key at an alarming rate, locking minorities, we 3rd class citizens, into a repeated cycle of poverty laced bondage.

Welcome to the new Jim Crow Era.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Jim Crow Laws in existence between 1876 and 1965 – not that long ago – it was basically the segregation of Whites and Blacks.

It was quite frankly, “Don’t put your black lips on my water fountain…” “Don’t put your black ass on my toilet in the restroom,” and “Get your black feet off the sidewalk when a white person walks by.”

Does that upset anyone? Do I have your attention? Are you as pissed off as I am right about now?

Today, those same laws would certainly and without question apply to Latinos and any other non-white nationalities in this country.

My question is would we stand for it?

And my personal and humble opinion is unequivocally “YES!” of course we would.

Because we have a modern day form of those laws in existence as you read this blog. And we’re too preoccupied with ourselves to care that many around us are being subject to these types of gross injustices.

With the introduction of Author Michelle Alexander’s new book titled, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, we can no longer ignore the factual evidence now being placed in front of us.

There is a quote in Alexander’s book from President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, which reads, “The whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

Please go back and read that quote again and let it marinate for a minute…

Can you imagine the President of the United States being told blacks are the problem, we need a system that controls them, but we can’t appear to be controlling them?

Since that time we have gone from 300,000 people in prison to 2.3 million in prison, with an additional 5 million on probation or parole.

Does this sound like the control of blacks and Latinos to anyone?

It’s high time we realize that these systems were put in place over forty years ago to control the progression, or lack thereof, of African Americans and eventually other minority populaces, primarily Latinos, who also inhabit inner-city communities across the country.

And it’s about damn time we begin as a collective to get serious about breaking this chains and cycles of oppression. According to the National Urban Leagues, “State of Black America Report,” Black men and women earn 62 cents on the dollar earned by whites; Less than half of black and Hispanic families own homes and 40 million people are living under the poverty line in this country, this being based on pre-recession data. Conditions are much worse today.

And here we are locked into a system that prefers to spend $45 thousand dollars a year to confine a 19-year-old, non-violent criminal, than to use that money for programs designed to actually treat, rehabilitate and educate that same 19-year-old.

Bryan Stevenson stated on the Bill Moyer Journal, imagine “What kind of America we can create if we invest in deconstructing the systems that have created poverty, reinvesting in jobs, reinvesting in a kind of politics of hope. We talk about it, but we don’t make it real unless we deal with the most hopeless, marginalized, subordinated communities in our society.”

Mr. Stevenson is one who is trying to carry on the war waged against the system so many decades ago by Dr. King.

As I hear the sirens screaming outside my window I recall Dr. King’s speech when he powerfully said, “I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promise land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promise land! And I’m so happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man!”

The next day Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered.

I just wish some of you would rid yourself of that fear of man, that fear of the system… and journey with me to the summit of that same mountain Dr. King was climbing.

It’s time we remove these chains and walk as free men in our communities!

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.

Fly… Blackbird Fly

2010-03-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

Fly… Blackbird Fly

I have a disease that although I’ve never been diagnosed for, I know exists in the very depths of my DNA. It’s as much a part of my genetic code as the tiniest chromosomes that make me the living, breathing, walking, talking mess of a human being that I am.

And unlike most patients, I can actually pinpoint the exact moment my symptoms began to display themselves to me, since it was the first time I held my oldest daughter, Heaven, in my arms. With the births of my daughters Starr and Anesa some years later, each symptom only became stronger and more acute.

I don’t believe there is any clinical terminology for this disease… But it’s basically one that causes my softest side to reveal itself to the world every time I look in the eyes of a young girl…

I see my daughters in all of them, I immediately want to protect them, shelter them from harm, educate them about loving themselves, believing in themselves and respecting themselves…

In other words, I want to be their fathers, especially to those who don’t have one… or have a poor excuse for one.

If I had to put a name on this disease, I’d call it fatheriticus complexitus. And the definition would read: “A complex disease in which a father wants to save the daughters of the world, even if they’re not biologically his.”

Not the worst disease in the world to have, but a draining one to say the least.

And even though I’m told about twice a week that I’m an inspiration to someone, many probably don’t understand that even the inspiring have to find inspiration where they can to make it through their most difficult days.

The funny thing is you just never know where that inspiration is going to come from. And I had no way of knowing how much I’d find at the Blackbird Fly Conference in Staten Island, New York, this past weekend, organized by community activists NYOIL and Artina Sharpton.

After speaking to the girls bluntly about my own teenage history with domestic abuse, why I was a batterer, why I hurt the young girls I was supposed to love and how I feel about my behavior today as a man, I stayed to listen to NYOIL speak to the young women.

I was immediately called out when NY said, “I’m not here to play nice with you and tell you that you can be anything you want to be…”

Damn, did NY just call me out?

After all, I had just told them they could become whatever they wanted to be, if they worked harder than the person to the left and right of them…

He went on to passionately explain his position when he told the young ladies that many of them would fail in life, that many would get caught up in bad relationships with bad guys, that some would even be murdered out there running around on the streets.

NYOIL was speaking sincerely and straight from the heart when he spoke about how many of them felt like the adults owed it to them to give them whatever it was they wanted in life. As if everything should just be handed to them.

Damn, NYOIL has a bad case of fatheriticus complexitus. Perhaps an even worse case than me…

I could tell he was trying to be brutally honest with these young females who are living in a world where brutal honesty rears itself on a daily basis in their neighborhoods and I truly appreciated his frankness.

He went into a story about how he and his wife had invested so much of their personal money into buying these same teenagers sneakers for the track team, and dresses for dances, that they literally ended up in court fighting to keep their house.

He spoke about the heartbreak of putting his families financial needs second, only to see the kids quit the track team after getting their free sneakers… after being put first in a world that almost never puts them in that order.

And I thought all this time I was the only one spending rent money to help someone seemingly more in need than myself.

His message was an inspirational bullet that stuck me so hard in the head I almost allowed the tears to roll down my face. He talked to them about the fact that they were stealing the next person’s opportunity every time they took advantage of someone’s sincere love and kindness… and I thought everything about the event was genius and timely.

If even one rapper on Jay Z’s, Eminem’s or 50 Cent’s level understood the truest definition of real… I believe they’d all have a case of fatheriticus complexitus. I understand Jay Z doesn’t have children, but what excuse do the other two have?

NYOIL defined “REAL” for those young ladies in attendance in a way that very few men ever will. And I pray that his message was heard in that room because it was certainly one of the most powerful I’d ever heard. It gave me the energy to continue my own mission to alter the mind states of these young adults in need of our help. It gave me a belief that there are people out here who still care. And it came a time when I was contemplating the eradication of “youth advocate” from my resume.

NY and Artina Sharpton managed a grassroots effort to bring in speakers, artists and professionals over several days to show these girls that there are people who still care.

My good friend Lynx Garcia ran a workshop with another good friend Patricia “Lady Picasso” Perez who came from Chicago. The workshop titled, “Be Your Vision,” was a hit in helping the girls discover who they want to be and how to get there.

On Sunday, the girls dressed in the most beautiful dresses and became real life princesses and queens for a night – complete with crowns – as they attended a beautiful gala dinner to introduce them to their inner royalty.

I truly respect what was done in Staten Island this past weekend and I ask you all to use this as an example of what a few concerned residents of a community can do to make this world a better place for our future mothers.

There is a saying by Friedrich Nietzsche that states, “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.”

If we don’t teach our young how to fly right into their dreams… how are they ever going to make it?

Fly… Blackbird Fly!

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.

Someone Please Tell God to Punch Back In

2010-03-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

Someone Please Tell God to Punch Back In

Does anyone, and I do mean anyone, have an open line of communication with God these days?

Is it possible that a priest or a nun, perhaps an elderly bible toting church going woman or someone who’s just been saved recently have a direct line of communication to the Lord?

And I don’t want to speak to any middlemen – no apostles – I’m looking to speak directly to the supernatural man himself, the one who’s supposed to be looking down over us and making sure we don’t get “too” far out of hand…

Um, hello… God… we’re way the hell out of hand down here!

Ladies, it’s true… God has to be a man… I can’t possibly imagine a female God allowing life to become so damn unnaturally screwed up down here on Earth… I mean come on… am I lying? Things are really, really out of hand.

If there is anyone out there that has the supernatural ability or maybe the 1-800 number, please call God immediately and pass this message on to him for me… Tell him Ivan Sanchez said it’s time to get back to work. His lunch break, coffee break, naptime or whatever it is he’s been doing since 30 AD should be over by now…

Tell him I said we need him to come down from the Heaven’s and straighten a few things out for us.

What an understatement huh?

If he gives you any trouble, if he says anything like, “The nerve of that Ivan Sanchez…” or “Who the hell does he think he is…” Tell him I’m just as pissed at him as he is at me.

Tell him I’m still very upset about all the World Wars…

Tell him I’m tired that soldiers are still dying in wars all over the world.

Tell him I’m upset he never answered my prayers for world peace – I spent 10 years in Catholic School, that’s a lot of unanswered prayers… A lot of Hail Mary’s, a lot of Our Fathers…

You better believe I’m upset.

Tell him I still don’t understand the Holocaust. Why were 12 million innocent men, women and children persecuted and gassed, tortured, shot to death and just plain slaughtered like cattle?

Couldn’t you have thrown a lightning bolt directly at Hitler’s ass without leaving the comfort of Heaven’s kitchen?

Don’t you read the newspapers or watch the evening news? We’re getting massacred down here…

Speaking of mass genocide, couldn’t you have thrown lighting bolts at Mao Ze-Dong and put a stop to the Chinese Revolution which killed upwards of 30 million? What about Stalin and the 17 million

Russians who died of hunger and war? Or Hideki Tojo, who had 5 million civilians slaughtered during WWII.

They can’t possibly go to hell… So please tell me you welcome them all in to Heaven…

What about all this modern day genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur?

What about the 20 million AIDS deaths in Africa… and those all over the world for that matter?

Or let’s talk about the 1 billion people who go to sleep hungry every night… and the 16,000 children who die of hunger-related causes every day. That’s one child every five seconds Lord… One Innocent child dying every five seconds…

Are you simply too busy to address any of these horrific acts against humanity… huh God?

You have to talk to me here… I have all these people saying, “God bless…” But I’m not interested in being blessed while the rest of humanity is suffering.

So tell me… Is it 2012?

Is that when you’re going to come back down here and straighten out this mess we’ve made?

If you’re waiting on an invitation Lord… here it is…. “Dear God… Please send help now!!!”

And don’t forget to bring Jesus, Jehovah, Buddha, and Allah with you. I have a funny feeling it’s going to take a team to turn this thing around.

To all those who read this blog and believe I’m headed straight to hell… Please don’t pray for me, don’t worry about me… Pray for all those who see hell right here on earth.

I’ve already seen the fiery pits of hell in the eyes of children… and in the eyes of the elderly… a pain that can’t be duplicated no matter how hot the molt and lava are… I’ll either adjust to the heat or I’ll find a way to put the fire out… I’ll be OK.

Just do me this one little favor and tell God to punch back in and get back to work already…
I don’t know about any of you… But I’ve seen enough to lose my faith in the unseen.

The only faith I have left is in humanity. I know we’re still capable of beautiful things when we come together as one.

The only question is… Will we ever come together as one?

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.

Singing the NYPD Blues

2010-03-15T13:36:00.000-07:00

Singing the NYPD Blues

I’ll tell you one thing… The New York City Police Department is as good at breaking the law as they are at breaking records.

Last year for example they broke the record for the most stop and frisk encounters with the public ever recorded, stopping a staggering 575,000 citizens.

You can use your imagination in regards to how many of those stopped were actually blacks and Latinos who simply happened to “Fit the profile.”

It’s something I’m unfortunately all too familiar with.

Several weeks ago I picked up my good friend Luis Antonio Ramos from the set of Derek Velez Partridge’s upcoming film, The Miracle of Spanish Harlem, only to discover there were no miracles in Harlem when the boys in blue set their sights on you.

Several blocks away from the film set I was pulled over by an unmarked police car.

I know my rights. I’ve watched a lot of movies… so in my best Huey Newton, Black Panther voice I asked, “Officer, can you tell me what I did wrong… I’d like to know why I’m being stopped.”

The reply came back, “I’ll tell you in a minute when you give me your license and registration.”

He later explained to me that not only did my vehicle match the description, but that I personally matched the description of a hit and run driver.

The only problem with his story was the fact that he couldn’t have possibly seen what I looked like at night with the heavy rain falling, the windows fogged up and my skull cap pulled down over my eyebrows.

He might as well have said, “I’m stopping you because you’re a SPIC with Virginia plates in Harlem…”

And after taking his time to enter my information into his database he came back and handed me my paperwork without ever uttering one word… Not an, “I apologize for the mix-up…” Not a, “Thanks for your cooperation…” and definitely not a, “Have a good night sir…”

I drove off joking with Luis saying, “I always match the damn description!”

But deep inside I wasn’t laughing because I knew I was just the victim of an illegal stop and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Apparently I’m in very good company though because according to the New York Times “Big Brother in Blue” article, “From 2004 through 2009, according to Police Department statistics, an astounding 2,798,461 stops were made. In 2,467,150 of those encounters — 88.2 percent — the people were completely innocent of any wrongdoing.”

That means almost 90% of the people being stopped and harassed by the NYPD are completely innocent of any wrongdoing.

Within the same week of my stop, my co-host on Rebel Radio (Urban Latino Radio), Steve “Trig One” Cancino was stopped in Brooklyn after our radio show.

Trig was made to exit his vehicle along with politically conscious rapper North of the Hip Hop group Division X.

They were forced to place their hands on the hood of a freezing vehicle in the dead of winter while they were searched for weapons. And they were also made to stand outside while the entire vehicle was searched illegally.

When Trig asked the two detectives, also in an unmarked car, for their badge numbers, they both proceeded to turn their badges around and ignore the request.

Just another example of how professional these rogue officers are and how blatantly disrespectful they are when they themselves break the law on a daily basis.

Later that week I watched officers from the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx, pull up to the corner bodega and rip the pockets right off the pants of a young black teenager – who as you might’ve already guessed – probably fit the description of being black in the South Bronx.

When the officers didn’t find what they were looking for… they jumped back in their black Impala and drove off as if they were never there.

I wonder if those types of stops are documented in the NYPD database.

The only satisfaction I received out of all of this was a week later, when one honorable and brave officer finally broke the blue wall of silence and spoke to ABC news about the fact that the 41st Precinct is getting orders from One Police Plaza to write more summonses and make more arrests. (Video here)

Officer Adil Polanco is quoted in the video as saying, “Our primary job is not to assist anybody. Our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.”

Ah, now it’s all starting to make sense. But I thought the NYPD has always gone on record as saying there are no quotas???

Later in the video a secretly recorded audio tape is played in which an NYPD supervisor at roll call clearly states, “If you think 1 and 20 is breaking your balls, guess what you are going to be doing? You’re going to be doing a lot more, a lot more than what you think.”

He’s referring to the 1 arrest and 20 summonses all officers are expected to comply with.

And in yet another audio recording a different supervisor states, “Next week you could be 25 and 1, you could be 35 and 1. And guess what? Until you decide to quit this job and become a Pizza Hut delivery man, this is what you’re going to be doing until then… Do we understand each other?”

Yes, we’ve finally caught these bastards red-handed on tape… Justice is coming their way… Or is it?

Like with anything the NYPD does in New York City, the story was dead and buried before it became a story.

As for the only honorable police officer at the 41st Precinct, Office Polanco was suspended shortly after blowing the whistle on charges that he pushed his supervisor.

Something tells me he’ll be delivering my pizza the next time I place an order at Pizza Hut.

If you ask me he probably would’ve felt more satisfied had he at least punched his supervisor dead in the face.

The moral of the story is they’re really proving that they’re not here to serve and protect… So their new motto really should read… “The NYPD… Here to harass and disrespect!”

In the NYPD it simply doesn’t pay to be honest – that’s why they got me singing these NYPD Blues…

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.

When I grow up… I want to join a gang

2010-03-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

When I grow up…

I want to join a gang

This is a public service announcement to all millionaire gang members – “Stop brainwashing our youth you ignorant bastards!”

This goes out to Baby from Cash Money Records with your big red star tattoo on your head, talking about, “keeping it blood all day,” while your son (Lil Wayne) is locked up on Rikers Island for gun charges.

You better hope no REAL Bloods decide to pull Lil Weezy’s card on the island for flying a false flag… Better yet, you better hope no Crips decide to take his little 105 pound frame for a test drive for claiming Bloods.

Baby… How does it feel to join a gang in your 30’s? I thought that was something we did in our preteens to find acceptance, protection, camaraderie, family, etc.?

Yet you’ve joined after becoming a successful business man…

You mean to tell me with your tens of millions of dollars in houses, cash, cars and jewelry you haven’t found the acceptance you were looking for?

Because you damn sure weren’t a Blood three or four years ago. And neither was Weezy when he was flying a Crip flag in his early music videos… Did he just get tired of the color blue and decide he liked red more?

And by the way, how much did you guys have to pay for your initiation or affiliation into the Bloods? Because something tells me you weren’t jumped in or sexed in… at least I’m hoping not the latter.

This letter also goes out to the Dipset, specifically Jim Jones and Juelz Santana for introducing the Bloods to Harlem in much the same way Nicky Barnes introduced heroin to the community in the 60’s and 70’s.

Your lies and deception are killing our youth on a daily basis you ignorant bastards!

Honestly, please explain to me how you live with yourselves each day knowing your glorification of a violent lifestyle kills

teens every single day?

Teens that look up to your level of success only to find you wearing “white face” and modern day woolly wigs, gloves and tailcoats… dancing for your masters at the record labels.

You keep dancing for the destruction of Black and Latino youths you silly bastards. Just keep shucking and jiving all the way to the nearest bank.

And I’ll keep going to the community centers to try to grief counsel the teens actually experiencing the pain of living this gang lifestyle.

I’ll keep jumping out of my truck in the South Bronx, breaking up violent fistfights like the one I saw this afternoon. A fight in which six girls were beating one girls head into the concrete pavement until blood began gushing from her head.

It took a bus driver, myself and two other grown men two minutes to stop the attack. And it’s scenes like these playing out in cities across the US that make my blood boil at the glorification of gangs and street violence.

We made it so cool to behave like this… until we’re staring at all that blood… listening to all that screaming… then it’s not so cool anymore.

Honestly, the least any of you can do since you profit off the death of your own is send flowers to the funeral homes… and while you’re at it send a card that reads… “I’m sorry I killed you kid… but I got a nice new Bentley out of it…’

Correct me if I’m wrong… but I’m a firm believer that if you actually lived through the street wars of the 80’s and 90’s you’d have a certain respect for the realities inflicted upon our communities due to this type of lifestyle.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t a lot of the real gangsters who did fifteen to twenty years and are now coming home, now trying to help the youth avoid those pitfalls, not live up to them.

I don’t respect anyone who glorifies the gang life as if it’s a badge of honor that should be represented to the fullest…

I don’t believe any of you have ever sincerely stood over the coffin of a teenager lost well before his time. And if you did stand over the coffin, you might as well have spit on the cold body with the behavior you’re all exemplifying these days and passing off as real.

Because that’s exactly what you’re all doing… spitting on the graves of all those killed in gang violence due to their circumstance.

And the only thing real about it… is how really damn pathetic it is that anyone who considers themselves a real man would pass this off as the right way to live your life.

The sad thing is you all do it with big smiles on your faces and even bigger chains dangling around your necks.

Funny that this new form of slavery comes in diamond and platinum… although much more appealing to the eye, they are still chains of slavery… this time mental slavery!

Tell me fellas (millionaire gangbangers) when will enough be enough with this type of sick ignorance. An ignorance that has us killing ourselves in a never-ending cycle, all in the name of financial success for a very select few?

The fact that Dipset, Cash Money and so many others have so heavily pushed gangs into our streets, schools and homes is one of the greatest mocharys of Hip Hop’s storied history.

It’s nothing less than a crime against humanity… and a crime against ones own race.

And I personally – yet again – am at a loss as to why it hasn’t been addressed by the elders of Hip Hop and those respected in our communities.

Of course Bill Cosby has tried by presenting The Cosnarati: State of Emergency featuring Supa Nova Slom, Jace the Great and Brother Hahz. But it cost him a war of words with Russell Simmons and many others.

Underground rap phenomenon NY OIL has made some of the most controversial records of our time dealing with the death of our community at the hands of these rappers. Most notably “Ya’ll Should All Get Lynched…”

Of course, the song and video is too truthful to ever get mainstream attention… the truth hurts way too much.

This open letter is addressed to all those men over 21 who have now grown up and decided to join gangs.

I don’t respect you… you’re all clowns to me… thank you for making this world a circus of death.

They’re not laughing with us… they’re laughing at us!

***Special thanks to my brother Trig One for bringing this ridiculous phenomenon of grown men and some of Hip Hop’s elite joining gangs well after they should’ve actually grown up.***

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.

My mom doesn’t care if I walk like this…

2010-03-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

My mom doesn’t care if I walk like this…

Growing up in the Bronx meant you had to have a mean walk, the meaner the walk, the least likely you were to be set upon as a target.

And keeping that bull’s-eye off your back meant the avoidance of becoming labeled a statistic, a victim, a casualty of some other young tough whose walk was meaner than yours.

These were the unwritten rules of the streets. Rules learned more though observation than conversation.

And no one in my life had a meaner walk than my cousin Herman. His ditty bop was so hard that he must’ve appeared to have one leg shorter than the other to the casual outside onlooker.

I remember the first time I decided to adopt my older cousin’s mean walk. I spent the entire weekend sleeping over his house, practicing in his shadow.

If he noticed me, he didn’t say anything. As I walked directly behind him attempting to get the dip of my leg coordinated with my shoulder. I was trying to figure out the proper height of the bop with the sway of my body and get them all in a synchronized dance of toughness.

Damn, this walk was much tougher than it looked.

I was about nine-years-old and it was time to unveil my walk to the world.

My siblings and I were walking up the Grand Concourse with our mother on the way to school. I’d been doing my ditty bop for about two blocks when my mother finally noticed my new tough guy walk.

Smaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I felt the crash of her hand against the back of my head and coupled with my off balance walk – I think I was on the down strut of my bop – the force sent me flying into the concrete sidewalk…

“I’m not raising no titere here… so you better straighten up that walk mister.”

It was my mom taking a stand against me turning into everything wrong our community was becoming.

Of course this was before the anti beat-your-kids-ass laws went into affect. It was still a time when parents could be parents and lay a respectable smack down on their children for misbehaving, disrespecting and just plain getting out-of-line.

In today’s society many children keep ACS (Administration for Children’s Services) on speed dial on their iPhones – just incase mom and dad even think about disciplining them.

Over the last few years I’ve had a lot of back and forth dialogue with people about the fact that it’s the parent’s responsibility to raise their children.

But the question still remains, “What happens when the parents are children themselves?”

Or better yet, “What happens when the parents don’t care to be parents?”

Or when the parents believe that raising overly aggressive kids who are quick to fight and curse is the right way to go, for the sake of their children’s survival on these same mean streets Piri Thomas wrote about over 40 years ago?

Never have I personally had to analyze so closely these questions. Not until last week when I received a call from a school in the South Bronx in need of assistance.

And what shook me to the core of my foundation was that it wasn’t a High School and it wasn’t even a Middle School…

I won’t name the school here because they’ve taken a bold, drastic and just plain desperate step in contacting me to come in and assist them with the problems they’re experiencing with their children.

And when I say children I’m speaking about first and second graders.

Yes, you heard me right… 1st and 2nd Graders!!!

When I sat down to meet with the Principal she shared with me that they’ve reached out to many organizations and many politicians to no avail.

I was most disappointed to hear that a letter to Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. went completely ignored.

Ruben, you have to do better than that brother. You simply can’t ignore a schools cry for help, especially when you’re the President of said Borough!

I sat there listening to stories of how the children fight with each other, the things they say to each other, the things their parents say to them, what parents say to each other and on and on.

It scarred my heart that children this young were already cursing and talking about drugs, violence and sex. And it took me back to being in a sneaker store a few months earlier when I heard a mother say to the most gorgeous little girl, “If you keep walking away from me, I’m gonna beat your stupid ignorant ass so bad when I get you home…”

Did she just call that little doll STUPID and IGNORANT???

I shook my head and gave the mother the meanest look I could muster up, meaner than my Cousin Herman’s walk. But I still felt like I failed the little girl when I failed to tell her mother verbally that the way she’d spoken to her daughter was beyond disgusting.

While I was sitting in the Principal’s office – this time an invited guest - it became apparent to me that what the youth in a lot of these communities are missing are mentors to replace the parents they don’t have.

What they’re missing is a professional adult in their life who will be honest with them about the difficulties of life, while at the same time mentoring them about all the possibilities that await them if they can survive the dire circumstance they were born into.

So I’m asking all of my readers to reach down deep inside and come up with alternative solutions for these children whose lives are just beginning and who are already destined to fail due to their upbringing.

This is exactly what I’ve been talking about when I say if the parents fail their children in the homes… it’s up to the community at large to pick up that responsibility and save these children from a lifetime of failure.

And now it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is and be the community leader I’ve set out to be.

Now it’s time for all of us to find a viable, measurable solution for combating the brainwashing their parents are doing to them.

I don’t want any of these kids saying, “My mom doesn’t care if I walk this way… if I talk this way…”

But even if they do say this, I want them to follow up that sentence with, “But my mentor does care if I walk this way… talk this way…”

I want to smack these kids with a dose of love the likes of which they’ve never seen.

I’m about to adopt this school for the next few years… But I can’t do it alone… So I need to know who’s with me.

Mentors needed immediately!

If you’re interested in helping me with your ideas, your talent, your skill set or your mentorship abilities, please contact me immediately at ivansanchez72@gmail.com

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.