Maná backs social causes with new song “Mi verdad”, a duet with Shakira

Ana María Alvarado  Abril 21, 2015  1:45 am 

The song “Mi verdad”or "The Truth" talks about the lies media and social networks sometimes tell, as well as dictators 

Maná with Shakira singing "The Truth"

In Maná's song "Mi verdad," the group talks about the lies media and social networks sometimes tell, as well as dictators who have always existed in Latin America. This shows that they have always been committed to this global problem and, especially, to their country.

43 empty chairs...

New School, Old School? The New School Fiasco, Again and Again

ACT-UAW Local 7902's rally, held on March 16th, with adjunct faculty, graduate assistants, students, union workers, officials, & supporters at The New School in New York City
© ACT-UAW Local 7902

In mid March, The New School was having problems with its contract negotiations, and Brian Caterino, who had taught there years before as a contract worker -- though he was paid the same measly compensation adjunct faculty were paid -- commented that this was nothing new. 

I asked him if he would write something about this, and he did...



A few weeks ago, part time faculty at The New School held a day of protest over stalled contract negotiations and work conditions. The part timers who teach 85% of The New School courses have been without a contract since August 2014. The current proposals included reductions in health care benefits to part time faculty and other cuts. Part time faculty want -- among other things -- better health care benefits, adequate payment for online courses, and job security. They point out the discrepancy between the wages of part timers and the extravagant salaries paid to some faculty and administration while others just scrape by. 

While part time faculty make about $16,000 per year, the President of The New School, David Van Zandt, earns over $700,000, and Vice President and CEO James Murtha over $1. 2 million. The New School also opened a new building at the cost of $352 million.

The University Center at The New School
© The New School

These compensations continue the precedent set when ex US Senator Bob Kerrey became president. Not only did he get over $900,000 yearly salary, but also he received a $1.2 million golden parachute when he left in 2010 and continued getting a six figure salary as emeritus president. 

All You Want To Know About Ayotzinapa & the Caravana 43!

I decided to collect articles and videos from Dallas as the Caravana 43 contingent from Ayotzinapa came through our city. 

Trying to place them all together in one place for easy access, my colleague Vanessa Vaile from Precarious Faculty -- an invaluable educator and friend -- helped me incredulously in getting this huge list together. 

Vanessa Vaile & me

But I am sure there are a lot more articles and other telling bits of information. 

Please let me know what they are: post them here, add to our growing list, so that we have a repository for the great activism and awareness we so need to achieve -- the movement we are trying to bring forth -- so that everyone becomes aware that the disappearance of 43 students is now much more than these 43 students. It marks the disappearance of these 43 plus 25 thousand more. And with them, it also recognizes that over 100,000 have been lost to the horror of drug-related violence and crime. 

But what is worst is that this travesty is condoned, accepted, even propagated by those in power. 

This movement, Ayotzinapa with the Caravana 43, concerns the insolence of a government that made the mistake to think that its people -- because they were poor -- could be bought. 

Ayotzinapa's Caravana 43 USA: Calendar of Events

Our Dallas For Ayotzinapa T-shirt,
representing the central region: always fighting, ¡en pie de lucha!

The Caravana43 is well on its way through the country, taking its different routes, making news in Spanish media as well as English. By the time they finish, they will have stopped in over 40 cities nationally.

This is a quick post giving you the rest of their calendar schedule for the three segments of the caravana: west going up California, central going through Texas and north, and east going up through New Orleans to the east. They will eventually all converge in New York City and Washington, DC.

USA Welcomes Caravana43: Todos Somos Ayotzinapa!

I want to let you all know that finally the Caravana 43 will enter the USA with the parents and students of the disappeared normalistas of Ayotzinapa.

They will be crossing the border on Thursday, March 19th, and then they will break off into three contingents to drive through the country.

After NAWD & NAWW: The Struggle Continues, Together...

Thinking about the events of last week and NAWD/NAWW — National Adjunct Walkout Day and Week — I have become introspective. 

So I began looking through my old writings, and I came across this piece I thought I had lost, from the fall of 2013, when my youngest daughter was beginning her last year of college. I remember feeling ambivalence yet excitement. 

And as I read it now, the words tumble back and my feelings exude that sweet pain that yet tingles vibrantly, not letting go, because it is still very much present. 

Will we ever let these emotions go? Will we ever stop worrying, stop musing over our children,  our loved ones, our students, our peers? 

Aren't we supposed to keep on going in our struggle, daily? 

------------

Beginning our eastbound journey, wet soaking rain piercing the days
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

I am getting ready to leave for two weeks on the second half of my road trip: I went to California before, and now to the northeast—this has been my cross-country summer. We are moving our youngest daughter to a house this year, her senior year in college, and though on a personal level I am happy and sad and ecstatic and also feeling a wee bit old, I am waxing philosophical. 

Why? 

As faculty, we want the best for our students. We do the most we can; we give them those critical thinking skills they need to think about the future, to forge ahead and make waves into tomorrow, to look at the big picture, to conquer it all. 

As a parent, though, I quiver. 

The Boys Behind the Symbol: Ayotzinapa

Where are the Ayotzinapa 43?

I first mentioned Ayotzinapa when I wrote about the tragedy of September 26th, 2014 in my other blog. Our loose group of grassroots activists had the first online encounter with the normalistas from the Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College, who had 43 students go missing from Iguala, in the state of Guerrero, Mexico.  


So, as I have been saying for some time now — after the 43 students of Ayotzinapa were disappeared — and after the government tried to quiet the parents with bribes and threats and impunity and all sorts of bully tactics (which adjunct faculty know only too well!), some of the parents decided that the next step was to come to the United States to seek justice and awareness for their cause.


Some of the other parents decided to go to Europe, that way raising awareness worldwide.

The president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, came and went to the United States at the beginning of January to also ask for assistance for the opposite cause — to have us help him get his government back under his control. What kind of control would you call that when almost 10,000 deaths have been reported in his administration alone, even when Mexico was already rampant with dirty drug wars, crime, corruption?

Yet still the parents and remaining students persisted, as is their right.

"We want our children back: give us the truth! Vivos se los llevaron; vivos los queremos. Alive they were taken; alive we want them back."

In DC, on January 6th protesting Peña Nieto's visit to the United States
© Ana M. Fores Tamayo

    I went to DC when Peña Nieto was here at the beginning of January, and it seemed quite the farce, all the antics both governments played together. What have we come to when our government condones the actions of a corrupt regime? Are we in league with the devil? Are we the devil? Why are we so eager to downplay the obvious ties to an unscrupulous system, a narco-government that gives no value to human life?

One of the things I ponder as I look through all the photographs and videos of the parents of the disappeared, is how venerated these students have become, yet how human they still remain.