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

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?

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.

An Open Letter to Ruben Diaz Jr.

An Open Letter to Ruben Diaz Jr.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makes perfect sense to me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be like Spike and Do the right thing…



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

The American Nightmare

The American Nightmare

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to my American nightmare…

Can someone please neutralize me already?

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



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

Latino controversy sells… But is it clean money?

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.

Pride and Prejudice

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