Skip to main content

Guadalupe Center in Crisis: The San Antonio Express-News finally publishes a story/What took them so long?

The SAEN has suggested they will be doing a substantial

story on the Guadalupe Cultural Center. This is what happens when
a corporation owns a newspaper - you publish stories about
"good" latinos for the brown people to read your paper and read the ads. And blast/stereotype or don't write about the "bad"/rebellious/controversial/passionate brown ones because
they might upset the conservative advertisers and publisher.

Unfortunately, all the media in town is corporate-owned -
except for KEDA, the only independent radio station in
town - the conjunto station.

Dave Davies, the new executive at Texas Public Radio pretty much stated that the public radio affiliate could only react - to the Guadalupe Center story. In other words, no story.
He's called me before to complain about how not one Latina gets to have a real voice in San Antonio. A city where brown women are in the majority.


This is the San Antonio Express-News story below that ran last Friday, March 23, 2006


http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/search/indexmysa.jsp


Arts | Entertainment

Sponsored
By

Guadalupe center gets called out

Web Posted: 03/24/2006 12:00 AM CST

Elda Silva
Express-News Staff Writer

Councilwoman Patti Radle is urging the board of directors of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center to "take immediate action" in responding to community concerns about the organization and staff complaints.

The statement was made in a letter presented, but not read, to the board on Radle's behalf by assistant Santiago Garcia at a board meeting at the Guadalupe Theater on Thursday night.

"Not addressing the issues immediately has allowed the issues to fester and has been a discredit to the reputation of the organization," Radle writes.

In December, the Guadalupe's public relations marketing manager Dolores Zapata Murff filed a formal complaint with the board alleging racial discrimination and sexual harassment by President R. Bret Ruiz. In addition, former education director Mary Jessie Garza has filed a complaint with the board regarding her termination in January and is seeking reinstatement.

Community members have expressed concern about the center's education program, citing a drop in the number of courses offered under the Juntos en Arte program and tuition costs they allege have cut community participation.

Several members of the community spoke at the meeting, including freelance writer Barbara Renaud Gonzalez who called for the resignation of the board to a smattering of applause.

"I think that the board, frankly, needs to resign and needs to move on and let us rebuild the Guadalupe," she said.

Maria Ibarra, who has taught theater at the center, began by asking three board members seated at a long table so they faced away from the crowd of about 30 to "take a moment and look at all the faces that are here out of courtesy, out of respect, so you know your community."

"It's a community arts center," Ibarra said. "Where are the arts? Why is this theater empty? Why isn't anything happening? Why doesn't the community just walk in like they once used to? Why do I have parents who can't afford to bring their children to the classes any longer? What can we do?

"I know arts funding is getting cut. We all know that. But if we don't know where you're headed, if we don't get any answers from you, the only thing we can do is assume you don't care," she said.

Board chairman Juan Aguilera directly addressed community members.

"This board does not have anything against anybody out there," he said. "There are two complaints that have been raised, and they're all over the media so it's not anything that's private. I've instructed every one of these board members and I've told staff this is a personnel matter. You cannot speak about those things because we have to honor and respect the privacy of those individuals. And we will do that.

"So our silence does not mean we do not care. Our silence means we respect our employees."


lsilva@express-news.net

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mary Alice, wife of Henry Cisneros, finds her voice in San Antonio as women battle for Free Speech in the Streets

She's a delicate bird of a woman, petite and beautifully apparelled. I know her husband, and she looks up to her supremely intelligent, charismatic, but scared of the status-quo husband. I suspect that she became a San Antonio councilwoman as a result of his lanky shadow. No matter. Yesterday, la Mary Alice stood up to the Man along with Councilwoman Lourdes Galvan and voted on the side of the Constitution and women's rights as one of two women on the San Antonio City Council who recognizes that anti-war or anti-immigrant protestors should be able to march on the streets without having to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. While the city-wide Fiesta! bacchanal takes over the streets for weeks. With a vote of 9-2, the San Antonio City Council overwhelmingly voted to pass a new "Parade" Ordinance yesterday despite the organized protest of free speech advocates - mostly women - who believe that the City Council is violating the First Amendment of its citiz

A battered woman from San Antonio loses her reporting job

Gina Galaviz , 43, KSAT-TV's I-love-the-police reporter, "has been fired" from the television station , according to the San Antonio Express-News, and I'm quoting verbatim here from Jeanne Jakle's byline, "after she was charged with assault following a fight with her boyfriend," Ronald Aguillen, 46. Ok, so we in San Antonio know about the time in 2004 when Gina filed charges against another boyfriend, the former SWAT cop, who was a councilman at-the-time, Ron Segovia . There were allegations of an apple being thrown at her nalgas, which humiliated her, and that he also pointed a gun at her. It was not the first time, she told me. Tough-guy Segovia got off - I think he had three attorneys representing him if I remember correctly, and in this city, like too many, the cops are in bed with the grand jury - they need and depend on each other, and this grand jury decided there "wasn't enough evidence to pursue a criminal case against him." Seg

Jerry Pittman: The Worst Cop, but there's more in San Antonio

Part II of the Pittman Story ( click here for Part I of the story of San Antonio's badddddest cop) But let’s go back to the beginning of Pittman’s triumphant arc as a black role model, endorsed by white leaders and officially commended by the state’s black legislators. If you were a black nobody cop in the seventies, well, what would it take for you to get promoted? You’d have to be Superman, wouldn’t you? And in a city that sells itself on a myth of cultural fusion, then who would you arrest if you wanted a chance at getting promoted? Hmmmmm? His name was Big House. Real name, Willis Sterling, and he was one of those benevolent drug-dealer types, who’d get arrested, make bond, then go home to the Eastside in the 1980s. A non-violent man. “He was like a modern-day Robin Hood,” says T.C. Calvert, a well-known community activist who doesn’t do drugs himself, only hamburgers. He was so well-liked, say my elder sources, that all sorts of politicians liked hanging out a