March 2006 Megamarcha Los Angeles

"Prometheus Unbound" Concerning the 2006 Megamarch in Los Angeles
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The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 73 Prometheus Unbound: Poetics of Power and La Megamarcha Dos Mil Seis Los Angeles Edith Morris-Vasquez Pitzer College To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, this seems omnipotent; To love, and hear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates. Prometheus Unbound, 18201 Percy Bysshe Shelly Abstract: This article is a participatory essay derived from the Los Angeles march. It documents and describes the march as a performance of community power and a form of epic resistance connected to poetry and to Latina/o organizational strategic culture across the generations and with a concluding comment on youth politics. Keywords: Los Angeles, Latino politics, immigration, performance, poetics, immigrant protests, public performances In ancient Greek myth, Prometheus is the Titan who most loves mortals. Zeus assigns him to the creation of the human race, and Prometheus designs the human race in the image of the gods. While Zeus does not provide the people with a means of survival, Prometheus gives them fire. To punish him, Zeus orders that Prometheus be chained to the highest summit of the Caucasus mountains where his liver is to be eaten by an eagle; because the Titan is immortal, the organ regrows and is eaten anew every day. The story of Prometheus’ rebellion against the Olympian chief has been adapted by writers throughout the ages, and each version has its particular uses. Though almost entirely lost, the original Greek play by Aeschylus had Zeus and Prometheus eventually kiss and make up after Prometheus is freed and their accounts are settled. In Shelly’s verse drama there is no reconciliation. In Goethe’s poem “Prometheus,” the two are portrayed as natural enemies; one is allied with humankind, the other is an authoritarian and unsympathetic godhead. Goethe has Prometheus first ruminate on the innocence of humankind and then declare himself its protector in a notable act of solidarity against abusive power: Here sit I, forming mortals After my image; A race resembling me, To suffer, to weep, To enjoy, to be glad, And thee to scorn, As I! 2 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 74 Having identified with man, Prometheus, man’s progenitor, vigorously asserts their common fate vigorously claims a common fate that they will share beginning with, “to suffer.” This mutual condition, seen vis-à-vis Zeus’ omnipotence, leads to the assertion of the final line where identification culminates in what we might today term “coalition politics.” Just like (wo) man is made in the image of Prometheus, so too will s/he come to defy arbitrary and abusive power. Today, the adjective “Promethean” may be attributed to anyone with remarkable boldness, ingenuity, and creativity and I would argue these descriptors apply to the immigration megamarch of March 25 in Los Angeles in 2006. The Los Angeles Times reported police estimates of 500,000 people; organizers cited twice as much, placing the number at one million participants.3 Latinos and sympathizers of all backgrounds poured into the L.A. downtown streets not marching in homogenous unison but in polyrhythm. Observers took note of the fact that the march was multiethnic, multinational, and multigenerational. Many a baby stroller, infant backpack, and even family pet accompanied the marchers. And not all marchers were the same. A considerable amount of them came in contingents: student groups, grass roots and political action organizations, conchero dancers, a large party of the F.M.L.N., religious groups, and the South Central Farmers, among others, marched as distinct groups displaying their respective affiliations peacefully and en masse. Sensenbrenner’s H.R. 4437 was the rallying cause but the potential for such a movement had always been there: as several signs proclaimed, “The Giant Wasn’t Sleeping: S/he Was Working!” This was a new cultural event that went beyond the immediate and urgent political goal of rejecting anti-immigrant policy-making. Its elements, which normally extend in individually variegated, private or semi-private gestures of resistance throughout the geographical expanse of metropolitan L.A. and southern California, had been bound together and were in full swing, radiating Promethean audacity. Internal differences aside, the pluralism of the marchers promulgated a form of unity in coalition, and this was best expressed by the chosen attire of the marchers. Organizers and the Spanish-language media had asked for white to be worn. What could white symbolize? Consensus across a vast coalition of groups and individuals, as well as innocence, purity, and hope itself. The vast majority of marchers did wear white. In addition, many wore national flags draped around their bodies in a cape-like fashion, and many carried multiple flags, the American and the Mexican, the Salvadoran, Honduran, or Guatemalan. This was an embodied, motile manifestation of twentieth century material and political history; a people communally politicized not only by hard work and curtailed civil rights, lack worker’s protections and educational opportunities in the U.S., but also by North American foreign policy, the Central American civil wars, NAFTA, and neoliberalism—all contributing factors in the contemporary immigration waves. The masses were here and wore their status on their sleeve. No hiding in the shadows. No hushed Spanish. No deferential eyes. Instead fire was stolen from the indifferent and arbitrary powers that be, and exchanged among the marchers. A river of consciousness swam through the downtown streets, all tributaries leading northward toward City Hall. Constituents of concentric circles, each subgroup expressing a Promethean fate that lay within increasingly larger circles of social organization, reflected both their immediate networks as well as a pan-Latino and immigrant political force. Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants said, “What we are doing is building a movement that will transform America.”4 With all the punning (“March” and “march”) and stunning outpour, March 25th was an act of transforming culture. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 75 Most effectively, the march was a transformation; it communicated--not only to the policymakers, media, and general public, but to the message-makers themselves--that national and even regional divides had best be put aside for the time being. A fully coalesced immigrant rights movement set the necessary foundations in the path toward citizenship. And the cultural changes coincided with a political platform: “we are not criminals; we, too, are Americans; our only crime is hard work; I came here to work; we are workers not terrorists.” So it was that the cultures of hard work and indirect or sequestered civil participation became a culture of direct political work. As Raymond Williams asserts in The Sociology of Culture, 5 Thus the social organization of culture is an extensive and complex range of many types of organization, from the most direct to the most indirect. (Williams 213) In fact, the multitude of individuals, organizations, and marchers within megamarchers’ points to what Raymond Williams understands as an integral part of a given cultural transformation. Addressing Antonio Grimace’s broad and popular concept of intellectualism of the people at large, Williams concurs and further elaborates, All human and social and productive activities involved intelligence …it is then a matter of defining kinds of activity which involve an exceptional degree and regularity of its exercise (Williams, 215). One conclusion about the megamarcha can readily be drawn: intelligence was its guiding force. Calculated to resolutely defeat HR 4437, the march galvanized a self-consciously coalitional effort. Everywhere, justice looked into the eyes of justice and recognized its mirror image. More than a mere poetic tautology, the beaming gaze of political activism spoke of a brilliant fait accompli. A common chant to be heard was, “ahora marchamos, mañana votamos” (today we march, tomorrow we vote). This action was not a one-time action; rather it would lead to future sets of actions involving both the individual and organizational level. Politically speaking, a coalition had victoriously emerged, and it did not only speak for immigrants and their fate, it revitalized democratic values at a time when many people in the United States and abroad, had begun to doubt their existence; the unprovoked U.S. war on Iraq; the human rights scandals at Abu Graib and Guantanamo; and the Bush-Cheney position on torture and international treaties on global warming had forced many to question the nations’ espoused values. But while these were not explicit themes of the march, the march was without doubt the single most important display of public political dissent since the war in Vietnam: “Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War.”6 Additionally, the tremendous media exposure shone a limelight on the completely peaceful and civic tenor of the march itself. Supporting political actions took place in other venues such as schools where walkouts were underway and worksites where a virtual “Day Without a Mexican” was implemented. The impact of this massive non-participation in the business, industrial, and education sectors, which was accompanied by a one-day economic boycott practiced across the Americas, has yet to be fully quantified and studied. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 76 Not surprisingly, student actions garnered the condemnation of school officials and other monitors of state control. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s message appeared to be in conflict with his own activist roots: “Our first priority is to keep our kids safe that they need to be back in school.”7 In the same report, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Roy Roomer argued: “It’s one thing to have a spontaneous demonstration of free speech, but it’s another to have continued absences.” Student participation at the middle and high school levels befuddled school officials who wrangled over alternatives to what they maintained was a public safety issue but was a instead a fiscal matter to be sure. District and school administrators worked in close collaboration with police agencies to stymie and prevent walkouts from schools where, in the academic year, 2005-2006, 8,484 Latino children in grades 7 to 12 experienced drop out. 8 Powerful public voices like those coming from the mayor’s office, the Sheriff’s office, and the school Superintendent’s office, cast aspersions on youth politics. So, whereas adult marchers were rightfully portrayed as peaceful, children and youths were depicted negatively. The connection between educational access, immigrant rights, and political dissent remains to be clarified, although it will likely underpin future cultural transformations along the lines of Salas’ imagining. The fact that youth immigrant politics are apparently more offensive to the Zeuses of Los Angeles than adult ones is an important matter for critical reflection. Economic damage would appear to be the cause, but perhaps the greater fear is that instead of waiting patiently for civics class in their senior; the youth would educate themselves (and steals the fire). It is precisely at the crossroads of the education and rights issues that Latino politics has made its most vital and long term gains in the past. Though it is no small matter that the march began the process of shaping future Latino political power (as if it never had a past), political strength is not likely to turn into voting muscle unless a larger change, envisaged by Salas as transformation of American culture itself, also takes place. According to scholars working in the field of humanities, political change cannot come without cultural change. It is not happenstance that the Chicano movement occurred in a time of great cultural, literary, and artistic flowering. It is also clear that its political innovation went hand in hand with an insurgent poetic consciousness. In “No Revolutions Without Poets: Chicano Poetic Consciousness,”—the first chapter of Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema,9—Chon Noriega argues convincingly that the literary aspect of the movement was, a phenomenon found not just in the ubiquitous poetry of the times, but in the broader function of poetry as a medium for fostering a social movement. Additionally, Poetry—read at political rallies, published in movement newspapers, and circulated hand to hand—exerted a profound influence on the emerging political rhetoric and cultural politics of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s (Noriega, 1) Clearly the Chicano movement either positioned culture as integral to politics or never saw the divide between them. However, it would be remiss to emphasize the importance of poetry over the importance of education, which leads us back to the notion (popularized by the media) that youth activism during the march was detrimental to students and their education. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 77 Indeed, educational data shows that fewer students experienced attrition during the 2005-2006 academic year in the LAUSD than during the 2004-2005 cycle, at which time 9,142 Latino students in grades 7 through 12 dropped out of school. Might this single year decrease have been brought about by the civic engagement of youth? This is a question that needs to be answered by conducting a far more serious analysis. When speaking of cultural momentum, the impact of synchronous events should not be regarded as negligible. An important coinciding cultural event that took place on March 18, 2006, a few days before the L.A. megamarcha, was the Home Box Office release of the film Walkout. The movie, a dramatization of the East Los Angeles student walkouts in 1968, offered a visual and cinematic prototype for the 2006 student walkout—a connection that also needs to be studied.) With more political negotiation and less demonizing, today’s students could well have disseminated a political program similar to that of their adult counterparts, who took to the streets wearing white or even that of the 1960’s student movement. However and arguably because of general public censure and the administrative prosecution of students who walked out, a student-driven immigration and education reform was not allowed to flourish. Most tragically, Anthony Solder, a 14-year-old Ontario boy, committed suicide after being threatened with expulsion and other forms of retribution by a school administrator. The judge appointed to the civil rights suit brought by the child’s parents dismissed the case ruling a lack of intent and, on the matter of First Amendment rights, said that the school’s duty to protect a minor during school hours outweighs First Amendment rights. 10 Shockingly and in a setback encompassing not only student-led educational reform but minors at large, this case could set a dangerous legal precedent for minors’ civil rights. While student political participation is monitored, criminalized, and punitively silenced, military recruitment is ongoing and effectively targets Latino and marginalized youths.11 As the Tigres del Norte song puts it, we do take their jobs…on the battlefield! Aquí nacieron mis hijos que ignorando los prejuicios y la discriminación su patria los reclamaba y en el campo de batalla pusieron el corazón.12 Immigrant soldier deaths touch upon one of the bitter ironies of the citizenship dilemma. But where is this loudly touted desire to protect youth when it comes to protecting them from or on the battlefield? This question must be asked and while it might never be articulated within institutional and legal discourses structured according to mandates, and philosophical and methodological constraints, the arts can supply a host of creative and transformative resources to drive rhetorical, creative, and social inquiry into territories that for the time being, the social sciences and law cannot. As has been true during all moments of great historical change, a poetic consciousness must be encouraged among the stakeholders—whether young and old, documented and undocumented. Well-rehearsed and lauded models for national cultural and poetic identities (such as Benedict Anderson’s imagined and belonging-based community framework or Harold Bloom’s notion of poetry as literary inheritance), may become irrelevant, twentieth century anachronisms in the era of what Jahan Razmani has called the transnational poetics of the twenty first century. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 78 In a call to reexamine the American nationalistic base of American literary and critical production, Ramazani argues for a revamping of poetics along the lines of cultural transnationalism. Transnational poetics offers, for the most part, a potentially suitable concept with which to tie the immigration march to an emerging poetic consciousness. Ramazani outlines the problem by addressing the entrenched nationalistic character of English poetry and, particularly, U.S. poetry studies. Some poetry is, of course, imperialist, appropriative, and flattening in its cross-cultural engagements and negotiations. But when the intercultural tropes, allusions, and vocabularies of poetry outstrip single-state or single-identity affiliations, they can exemplify the potential for generative intercultural exploration. 13 Given that poetry is an important site for the social and literary expression of Chicana/o and Latina/o literature, Ramazani’s assertions regarding the lack of a transnational construction of English poetry become particularly apt in light of immigration politics and, particularly, coalition politics with viable transformative potential is most viable. I would like to suggest that, politically as well as poetically, coalition politics is a fertile ground for a new poetic consciousness belonging to the young and young at heart. As Noriega explains, “in xochitl in cuicatl” or “flor y canto” became the poetic concept of the Chicano Movement, as Noriega explains: More than anything else, however, the concept used the combination of prayer and poetry in Aztec culture to map a transhistorical identity onto the emerging Chicano political culture of the 1960’s. 14 For while poetry cannot wrestle, you might say, with immigration policy, nor does it have a favored place on legislative floors, it is advisable to recall the lines from William Carlos Williams’ poem, “To Asphodel That Greeny Flower,”15 in order to understand the critical urgency of poetry—here intoned as despised poems--for political change: Look at what passes for the new. You will not find it there but in despised poems. It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. For Williams, a mixed-race Latino whose ethnicity and immigrant background is persistently shunned in U.S. literary studies, poetry was the vital essence of all human thought. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 79 A doctor and at times scientific philosopher, Williams argued steadfastly for the necessity of poetry as a social force. While Chicana/o poets would take a much more forceful position than that of Williams. 16 Ana Castillo and Lorna Dee Cervantes, for example, would go to war against the white male patriarchal literary tradition in their two respective landmark poems, “A Christmas Gift for the President of the United States, Chicano Poets, and a Marxist or Two I’ve Known in My Time,” “ and “Poem for the Young White Man Who Asked How I, an Intelligent Well-Read Woman Could Believe in the War Between Races.” These defied the English literary canon and many of its most revered cultural and gender-biased assumptions. It was that through poetic means (poetic consciousness, poetic concepts, and poetics themselves) that the movement began to embody a viable form or politics, one that would eventually decry the public discourses that work to conceal the constructed nature of social realities which reign as ominously as Zeus does on Mt. Olympus. Like Prometheus, who challenges against Zeus’ indifference and malevolence, the young rise against Zeus-like policymakers and institutional enforcers; they are repeatedly subjected by a power that feeds like the eagle that consumes Prometheus’ liver. And yet they compose their rhymes, their spoken word, their love lyrics, their rap songs. In order to avoid romanticizing the youth’s revolt and, in the process, ignore the conditions being imposed upon their First Amendment rights, we must learn to listen to them. For poetic wanderings come from the young, and the immigrant right’s movement may follow could follow—and with good reason. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency recently increased repression by conducting deportations of non-citizen household heads, effectively separating minor children from their primary caretakers. A newly reinvigorated sanctuary movement has come to the forefront of the immigration debate, but where, again, are the protective instincts of policymakers and public officials when it comes to the fate or minors whose parents are deported? Perhaps these children will write the dirges and jeremiahs containing the apparatus of a new poetic consciousness. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80 The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies Endnotes 1 2 80 http://www.poetseers.org http://www.ffrf.org 3 Watanabe, Teresa and Becerra, Hector, “500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills,” The Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2006. 4 From “La Protesta,” by Maggs, John, National Journal, 4/8/2006, Vol. 38, Issue 14. 5 Williams, Raymond, The Sociology of Culture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. 6 Watanabe, Teresa and Becerra, Hector, “500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills,” The Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2006. 7 “Police To Crack Down On Student Walkouts: Truants Could Face Fines, Community Service,” KNBC Television, March 28, 2006, accessed on http://www.knbc.com, July 28, 2007. 8 “Drop Outs by Ethnic Group, Grade,” California Department of Education Educational Demographics Unit, data generated from http://dq.cde.gov on July 28, 2007. 9 Noriega, Chon, Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, Minneapolics: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p. 1. 10 De Atley, Richard K. “Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against School Officials Over Suicide of Teen,” The Press-Enterprise, http://www.pe.com, May 23, 2007, accessed on July 26, 2007. 11 Project YANO is an organization which seeks to educate youth on alternatives to the military. One of its leading organizers and intellectuals is Jorge Mariscal, a Vietnam veteran, scholar, professor, and anti-recruitment activist. See the organization’s website at www.projectyano.org. 12 http://www.letrasmania.com/letras/letras_de_canciones_los_tigres_del_norte_10762_letras_la_ muerte_del_soplon_34013_letras_los_hijos_de_hernandez_368466.html, accessed on July 27, 2006. 13 Ramazani, Jahan, “A Transnational Poetics,” American Literary History, Oxford University Press, 18.2, 2006, pp. 332-359. 14 Noriega, Chon, Shot in America: Television, the State, and the Rise of Chicano Cinema, Minneapolics: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p. 2. 15 Williams, Carlos Williams, “To Asphodel That Greeny Flower,” Ed., MacGowan, Christopher, The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume II, 1939-1962, New Directions, New York, 2001, p. 318. 16 I refer readers again to Noriega’s chapter, “No Revolutions Without Poets,” (see note #6 above) where readers will find a thorough discussion on the poets of the movement including key figures Alurista, Abelardo Delgado, and Corky Gonzalez and others who for the sake of length discuss further here. The Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2008, pp. 73 -80