In art we try to find or make patterns in life. Sometimes, life just hands us the patterns without any disguise or dissemblance. I ran into that recently when an issue discussed in a radio interview reared up again in my real life.
To begin, here’s the link to the great interview Michael Medrano and David Campos did with me for their radio program, Pakatelas!, in Fresno, CA, on station KFCF 88.1FM. Much talk about the blog in it. Also, I’ve included below the poem about Arizona’s SB1070 that I read on the radio. (And I can't keep Blogger from double-spacing it throughout. My apologies.)FEAR AND GUILT: AGAINST SB 1070 IN ARIZONA
When they stop the brown faces,
the Chicanos, the Indians,
when they say, “Show me your papers!”,
when only the white people walk free
without fear of being accosted
and arrested,
I want to tell them
their real fear comes from guilt.
Their ancestors killed the People,
the ones who were originally here.
They stole a continent.
Now they are afraid
that what goes around comes around.
It’s the Indigenous in the mestizos coming here
that they fear, can’t stand.
I am trying to swallow rage.
I am trying to remember
that my purpose is to heal
what has so long been broken.
I am trying to remember
that I know so many white people
who are outraged by this law, as well.
I am trying not to remember
the way they drove my ancestors
like cattle across the country in winter,
leaving a trail of the very young, the very old,
the too-weak-to-make-it behind in graves
scratched by hand from the frozen dirt.
And now they want us to show them proof
that we belong to the land they stole.
Does understanding the language of the heron
constitute proof of belonging?
Does listening to the wind?
Respecting the sacredness of corn?
Caring for the land?
Do they forget that the state they live in
was taken by force of arms,
that they once signed a treaty
giving full citizenship rights
to those who lived there,
that many of those brown faces in Arizona
have been there generations
longer than the earliest white faces?
It is more than I can handle, this hot anger,
this break in harmony with the world.
I must turn to the ancestors,
to the spirit world.
Give me strength and sense
to deal with this outrage.
Grant me to hi dv, the peace that starts within.
Help all of us draw together
to a s qua dv, triumph over oppressing powers.
You who were responsible for the survival
of following generations, even under conditions
that seemed to dictate that the People must die,
lend us your courage and your wisdom
as we fight against this unfair and callous law.
We will be shrewd and clever as you were.
We will not allow them to win.
Not this time.
Never again.
© 2010 Linda Rodriguez
As many of you probably know, several states have followed Arizona’s example and enacted similar (or even more severe) laws. Both of the states I deal with in my daily life, Missouri and Kansas, have wanted to pass similar laws, but haven’t been able to do it yet. In fact, Kris Kobach, who wrote this law for Arizona, is now Secretary of State in Kansas.
Ben and I drove down to Topeka, KS, for the Fourth of July to celebrate with my sister and her son and one of my brothers. On the drive back to Kansas City that evening, we were pulled over for routine traffic stop in Lawrence, KS. At that time, we discovered that Ben’s license had expired a few days before, and he had not realized it. So the police officer took his license back to her police car to run it for other offenses (none, of course) and to write up a ticket. This took quite a while—about 15-20 minutes. She came back with the ticket and asked if I had a valid license so I could drive the rest of the way home. I nodded and pulled it out so she could see. I saw her eyes widen as she saw my name, and suddenly she had to take my license also to run it. At the same time, she called another cop who had been at the other end of the block to come and stand guard by the passenger door of the car where I sat. I assume this was to guarantee that I did not bolt for freedom. (Both times she had come up to the car, she had approached the driver’s door.) This officer started asking me where I was from, what I was doing, where I was born, where I was going and why.
We sat for another 15-20 minutes while the first officer, I believe, tried to find a way to arrest me for being an illegal alien and my white husband of an English last name for transporting me (illegal in KS) while her colleague stood at my window keeping me from escaping. Fortunately, Kansas has not yet passed its Arizona-clone law. In the end, they had to let us go.
I do not carry my passport or my birth certificate on me routinely, nor should I have to. No one in this country should have to carry proof that they were born here and are citizens. “Show your papers” used to be the cry of the totalitarian states. I hate to see it become the de facto law of the land here. If an Arizona-like law were on the books in Kansas, Ben and I would have not been able to keep ourselves out of jail. They don’t accept just drivers licenses there, saying they can be too easily forged, the same thing they say about birth certificates and passports.
I am afraid of what is happening to my country.
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