archives/"What I've discovered about R. Bret Ruiz"), the alternative newspaper in this town, the San Antonio Current, spends valuable ink targeting me and this blog.
You call this journalism? Sad to say, it isn't. Tan jealous, porque my research is solid. Why don't they publish it? Because they work for corporate-owned media, bursting with sex ads, that doesn't want to deal with a character defamation suit. Because they know I'm right when I say all the media in this town is managed by whites. And they want to be in control of everything, even if they know it's wrong.
At the Guadalupe Board Meeting I attended on March 23rd, I spoke before the board, and listed my years of concrete board experience in Dallas - to substantiate why I thought the Board should resign. I reeled off my past board credentials, not my resume: I've been a boardmember of the Girl's Club; Women's Forum; Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; ACLU (officer); Teatro Dallas (Chair); and a member of the Dallas Commission for Cultural Affairs (a political appointment, I served three long years). From this base, yes, I told the Board they should resign.
And I meant it.
As I've said many times, I was censured at the San Antonio
Express-News in 2000 for my stand against the war. I guess it's
too much for one brown woman to have a blog as a way to speak
out. Men like Michael Cary deeply resent a latina asserting her
equality to them.
You see, I don't act like the sexy, sencilla, servile latina that
the Michael Carys out there would like me to be. How dare I? I threaten
them. Ridiculous. So they make yellow journalism.
They write just like the conservative media they profess to hate.
Because they are afraid of me. Why? I'm poor, I just bought a little car this year, I certainly don't want to be on a board ever again or want a job at the Guadalupe or anyplace else. I just want to write. The Michael Carys are the ones writing in the mainstream media, because they make sure I can't. But I'm not afraid of what they think of me. I'm only afraid of not telling the truth.
Here are three stories I've broken:
1. the firing of Kristina Ruiz-Healy at the SAEN
2. the revelations about R. Bret Ruiz, President of the Guadalupe Cultural Center, and possibly the beginning of the end of the nation's premier cultural center
by and for Chicana/o culture
3. the violation of students' civil rights in San Antonio by the imposition of
"lockdowns," which prevent the students from protesting and exercising their freedom of speech
But according to Michael Cary, my desire to tell the truth is my "show."
Here's the link to his latest below, when he should've been writing about
what the national impact of the Guadalupe Cultural Center is. When he had the chance to write about how the premier cultural center for brown gente known as La Lupe is on her knees, begging for us to help her.
*************************************************
News
By Michael Cary
| |
The Barbara Renaud Gonzalez show
Two new members of the board of directors of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Cynthia Segovia and Javier Guevara, sat for their first time last week with four veteran members. Chairman Juan Aguilera called the meeting to order.
GCAC President R. Bret Ruiz and board members Patricia Celis and Laura Hernandez sat with their backs to the audience at a portable table in the Guadalupe’s theater.
A Spanish-language TV cameraman jostled for the perfect angle as the meeting, declared open to the public thanks to a new policy of the Guadalupe directors, got under way.
One of the first items on the agenda was “citizens to be heard,” and self-promoting freelance writer Barbara Renaud Gonzalez stepped into the breach to speak her mind. But first, she asked someone to focus her video camera on her, ostensibly so the footage could be published on her eponymous vlog. “You operate in a very unconscionable way,” she told the board after she recited her curriculum vitae.
Aguilera interrupted her when she criticized Ruiz’s tenure at the center. “No personal attacks. We’ll be happy to speak to you afterwards.”
Aguilera avoided discussion of the topic on everyone’s mind: Ruiz recently has come under fire for alleged ill treatment of the center’s employees. He fired Mary Jessie Garza, the former education director, and Public Relations Marketing Manager Dolores Zapata Murff is on leave from the Center after she reportedly filed a sexual harassment and racial discrimination complaint against the Center with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The chairman said the complaints were aired “all over the media. This is a personnel matter. We have to respect the privacy of those individuals. Our silence doesn’t mean that we don’t care. We’re working on this matter and we’re trying to resolve things.”
Gonzalez, who blogs regularly and copiously about her mission to oust Ruiz and the current board of directors, told the board to “move on and let us rebuild the Guadalupe.”
More people filed more complaints during their allotted three minutes.
Santiago GarcÃa, aide to District 5 City Councilwoman Patti Radle, delivered a letter from her to the board.
“I’m sorry that I can’t be with you this evening,” read Radle’s letter, dated the same day. “The reason I wish I were with you tonight is because I understand that the strain of controversy surrounding the Guadalupe Cultural Arts organization has gotten to a very volatile level.”
Radle urged the board to “take immediate action in responding to the concerns of the community and accusations as we have seen appear in the media [see “Culture War,” February 8-14]. Not addressing the issues immediately has allowed the issues to fester and has been a discredit to the reputation of the organization. To wait so long is an injustice to the complainant, to the accused, and to the community.”
“There has been a lot of turmoil,” said Mara Posada when she took the podium to address the board. “We are here in support of the ogranization and the artists who built it. Support the barrio, however rasquache it may be.”
For a definition of “rasquache,” see the above-referenced article in the Current. However, any given conversation with Gonzalez reveals that a pinche gringo who attempts to define the word is, well, rasquache.
Comments