The San Antonio Express-News, like other newspapers and media outlets around the country, i s in lock-step with the public relations campaign of the Pro-Israeli lobby, which has silenced and biased our understanding of Palestine. Why? So that we won't understand that we don't have to be at war in the middle east. So that we won't understand the history, the culture, the humanity of the middle east. So that we won't understand Jews have many voices, not just one - for war. Why is the media so biased? Because it's the governments - not the people - of Israel and the United States - that want war in the middle east, no matter the cost. Because peace is possible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1O8il0AxSI Peac e, Propaganda & The Promised Land - Google Video http://www.indybay.org/olduploads/short.empire.jeff.mov Artistic credit: Pachuco, by Adan Hernandez

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...

August 21, 2006 Juan Aguilera, Chair Board of Directors Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center 1300 Guadalupe Street San Antonio , TX 78207 Dear Mr. Aguilera and Board of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center : The San Antonio chapter of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS), an organization comprised of women form the San Antonio community who care about what happens in our city, our state, our nation and our world, present to the Board of The Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center and to interested parties, our concern over the recent termination of employment of over 10 women from the Guadalupe Center. MALCS is a national association comprised of Chicanas, Latinas and Native American women who advocate and support women’s issues and concerns at all levels, from grassroots community venues to academic scholarly ones. As long-time supporters of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center , we are dismayed at the lack of procedural and civil processes by the women we...

Newspapers are about making money these days, punto . And they are paying dearly for it, as la raza stops reading them because we see through the bias, the patronizing (16 de septiembre!) and the lack of respect for our community. At the Dallas Morning News, reporters are being asked to leave in droves because of the decline in readership. A readership the newspapers caused by not educating the city. I maintain that If they had gone the way of fair and balanced journalism - critical to educating us about poverty, crime, the schools, health, etc., the audience they so desperately need now would be able I trto read the paper. I used to tell them this when I was there - and all I getting my butt kicked out of the editorial boardroom. It's going to happen here in San Antonio, and if you try to read the paper, you know how weak it is, and I"m being nice. There is so much to report in this city, and it doesn't happen. Yesterday, the Sunday San Antonio Express-News ran ...

On Buena Vista and Calavera Street on San Antonio's Westside, there is a house. It's a casa arreglada from the outside, those candy-colors we love, Christmas and Easter decorations all-year round. In that yard, surrounded by a fence, there are kittens. Last year, a kitten was hit by a car, and dragged itself around for three months. Another was so infested with fleas and parasites that an eye was falling out. When I told la senora , says Maria Ramirez who is a housekeeper by day and santa gatera by night, she said "que bueno que se muera." Maria says that la senora isn't interested in getting the cats fixed or feeding them. She called me last Wednesday night, emergency, she said. Did I have room for two kittens? She found them in the street, somehow escaping from the pretty house with the painted fence. Both gatitos were white, tiny, barely mewing. The smallest one almost fainted when Maria tried to give it some milk. The bigger one was gurgling for air,...

Some of you may know John Stanford, an elder who has a Supreme Court Case named after him - fighting censorship in the sixties. Last week, Mr. Stanford, as usual, went to the San Antonio Public Library downtown to distribute the People's Weekly World, a communist newspaper. This time, Elizabeth Bermel, the Central Library Administrator, sent him an email on Tuesday, August 15th, from the Library's server, denying the publication's distribution at the library. Here's what she said: "Multiple copies of your newspaper, People's Weekly World, have been appearing at the Central Library of the San Antonio Public Library. As the Central Library Adminstrator, I am responsible for approving all materials for free distribution at the Central Library, and People's Weekly World does not meet the Library's criteria." I guess she's been taking notes from the Incarnate Word University's Librarian recently, who banned the New York Times because he did...

Assistant Chief Jerry Pittman has called the San Antonio Observer, San Antonio's leading Black newspaper, to say that he's human, that he's made a mistake. But I suspect he's thinking twice about retiring, because he needs another year to get his full pension. He’s scary . When I first saw Asst. Chief Jerry Pittman en persona , San Antonio ’s highest-ranking black cop, and certainly most-controversial, my gut talked to me. I was at Pittman’s press conference downtown, orchestrated by the most expensive public relations firm in town, Connolly & Company, on March 11, 05, where he announced his exoneration from rape allegations brought by his step-niece, a 39 year-old working-class, black, woman. Chief Pittman, a 6’5” blue-black brother, with bullets instead of eyes, would’ve shot me if he could that day because of my questions, while the rest of the media kissed his grits. Look, I’m a middle-aged woman who trusts her intuition about men, and I know...

According to sources who ask to remain confidential, there is speculation that Cynthia Langston, the Guadalupe Center's Development Director, may have left her position as a result of an altercation there last week with a TCA Offical. Ms. Gage McElwain, Director of Marketing for the TCA, denies that any altercation or slapping occurred on their site visit last Wednesday. My reliable sources say that governmental agencies are intensely private about sensitive issues like this, insisting that something did happen. More on this later.

The following is a true story from Maria Antonietta Berriozabal, a former city councilwoman in San Antonio, Texas, highly respected for her integrity, dignity, and spirituality. On Sunday, August 6th, 2006, she wrote: Today was my mother's 96th birthday. At lunch I asked her how it felt being 96. For the past few days we had to remind her every day that her birthday was coming and she asked how old she was. Today in response she quickly replied: " No me gusta porque no llueve." And she said no more. We thought that was quite a response. Who knows where those thoughts came from. However, at about 5 today it started to rain. When you know my mom's story it makes a lot of sense. She was raised in the country and worked in the fields for most of her youth. Because of her interest in reading the sky and what messages it gave her she became a really good meteorologist. We could always depend on my mom on whether to take a coat a sweater o...

My family's 20,000 acres were stolen from us after the U.S. Mexican War. And before that, we had taken it from someone else - the Native Americans. As my mexicana mother always said, the land is to be shared. Otherwise, you have war. Today, the Palestinian people are under seige, as Israel forgets the lessons of suffering. The lessons of loss. Israel refuses to share, fearing the other. Believing that the only way to live is for one to dominate over the other. Sound familiar? Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land - Google Video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7828123714384920696 Photo Credit: Windows , by Carly Garza, Say Si Students, San Antonio, Texas www.://www..safotofestival.com