Review by Patrick Fontes   Mowing Leaves of Grass By Matt Sedillo 126 pp. Flowersong Press. $15 www.flowersongpress.com In Mowing Leaves of Grass Matt Sedillo gives us something special. More than a book of poetry about a lived experience, more than a powerful insight into life as a Chicano growing up in the barrio, Sedillo combines a unique awareness of the Chicano experience, rooted in race and class, with an intellectual critique of American society and history. And the poet pulls no punches. We quickly learn from his verse that he is servant to no master; he is an iconoclast willing and ready to pull the curtain away from any Oz America might be shrouding in its past. “And I didn’t come to make friends; And I didn’t come to hold hands; I came to talk shit,” Sedillo writes in the poem “Raise the Red Flag.” His honesty is not latent. We don’t need to muse over a cappuccino while wondering what his verse means—it is clear and often brutal. If you know your ancient poetry, this is...

By William Alexander Yankes On August 11, 2020, a CNN-Chile TV caption announced an indigenous healer’s farewell to life: “Machi Celestino Envió Mensaje de Despedida: Será un orgullo dar la vida por mi pueblo.” Healer and spiritual leader “Machi” (in native Mapudugún language) Celestino Córdova Tránsito bid his “final farewell” from his hospital jail bed just hours before the 100th day of a hunger strike he began on March 4, 2020. His voice traveled transnationally: “It will be an honor to give my life for my people.”  He had resolved to lay down his life in an effort to highlight the tragic plight of Chile’s embattled and historically disenfranchised native Mapuche community. For him, the Mapuche people he serves share a kinship with both indigenous nations worldwide and with global human rights advocacy networks. The solemn missive represented Machi Celestino’s yearning for meaningful changes in indigenous rights across the world. Since the era of conquest and colonization in the...

By Gil Cedillo One Saturday morning in late August 50 years ago, I finished my household chores early and slipped out of the house to meet some friends. We were going to the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. I was 16 years old, and this would be my first protest march. As it turned out, those were my first steps in a long march toward a more just world. I played quarterback on Roosevelt High’s Rough Riders football team, which at the time was my main goal in life. That day I marched with Mario Chacón and some other friends my parents called greñudos –longhairs. An estimated 30,000 marchers made the Moratorium the largest political protest in Los Angeles history. The Moratorium was a turning point for legions of young community activists. Marchers included political leaders Esteban Torres and Gloria Molina, attorneys Antonia Hernandez and Samuel Paz, photographer Luis Garza, and educator Maria Elena Yepes. My greñudo friend Mario and I wound up being roommates...

By Dr. William Alexander Yankes We live in a scalding time of crisis, but it can be a good thing. Krisis is a Greek term meaning “threshold of transition for choice,” essentially an opportunity for a decision to be made. President Donald Trump’s dismal governance has brought us to a frightening juncture of annihilation or survival. It is up to us which path we take. Our nation’s 45 th president made no attempt to dissimulate his authoritarian and baldly fascist bent when he sent federal forces to stalk the streets of Portland, Oregon and other cities in which news of racially unjust policing had triggered mass protest and civil unrest. By giving plain-clothed federal officers and contracted security agents in unmarked vehicles carte-blanche to assault, kidnap or otherwise detain unarmed civilians and thus stifle political dissent, he expressly attempted to disrupt our democracy. For sometime, he has openly encouraged highly armed militia to attack the very people he was sworn t...

East L.A. activists gatherat Atlantic Park to support BLM and oppose police brutality. Photo: Olivia Llanos By Aurelio Medina At 3:00 pm, on Sunday, June 7th, 2020; my girlfriend, a womyn friend of ours and I arrived at Atlantic Park in East Los Angeles. We approached humbly with our durable poster board signs. These proclaimed: “One Love,” “BLM,” “Capitalism is Cannibalism,” and “No Justice, No Peace, Defund the Police,” respectively in bold lettering. Although made in somewhat of a haste because we strove to be on time, they were no less heartfelt. Walking up to the East L.A. park, distinguished for its proximity to historic St. Alphonsus Church, we observed a growing crowd of peaceful demonstrators gathering to protest police brutality and the disproportionate use of excessive, often deadly force against unarmed people of color by police. Like millions across the country and around the world, the Boyle Heights, East L.A. and Greater East Side youth assembled in the park we...

Angelinos protest the death of George Floyd. Photo by Quran Shaheed, courtesy L.A. Sentinel   By Alci Rengifo “Now is the time of the furnaces, and only the light can be seen”-- Jose Martí The death of George Floyd in Minnesota as the result of nine asphyxiating minutes underneath the knee of a police officer has again lit the spark of popular rage across the imperial United States. From east to west the republic has seen in city after city the bonfires of tensions stemming not only from the country’s violent and complex racial history, but its class divisions as well. Inevitably Los Angeles has seen its streets swell with the justly angered. More than any other great American city, the greater L.A. metropolitan area is a microcosm of the social forces that have shaped this country and are in constant clash. Its wealth and poverty, its cosmopolitan character, its mixture of U.S. gringo culture and scores of municipalities as well as countless streets bearing Spanish name...