Dreaming Bigger Dreams

How do you end a column after 16 years? With
regrets and
unfulfilled dreams? Perhaps, but truthfully, Column of the Americas as a
deadline-based column ends with even bigger dreams.

There indeed is disappointment with the ease in
which the
U.S. populace has accepted and normalized 1) the notion of permanent war
as a
God-given U.S. birthright; 2) the further militarization of the nation
&
world; 3) the politics of fear, hate and blame; and 4) Big Brother
Government.
All with nary a whimper.

Under George W. Bush, this was not surprising. The
disappointment has come in seeing the Obama administration generally
embrace
the reactionary policies of Bush's 9-11 Nation. Despite the 2006 &
2008
electoral sweeps - in which the electorate thoroughly repudiated the
Republican
program of war, xenophobia and corporate welfare - [angry] conservatives
act as
though they won. The irony is that president Obama actually has governed
as
though he agrees, and owes them. For example, his health care reform is
actually a centrist compromise; universal health care it is not.

There are regrets; while many of us drove CNN's Lou
Dobbs
into political exile, we didn't consistently go after the entertainment
industry - an industry that enables dehumanization and what amounts to
racial
apartheid. During this era, Jay Leno made Americans comfortable laughing
nightly at "illegal aliens." After 35 years, Saturday Night Live has
still not
taken its "No Red-Brown comedians need apply" signs down, and
Spanish-language
TV continues to generally be an assortment of "all-blonde" networks.

Another regret is that the journalism profession
has now
become the lapdog of government. Even now, there's plenty of money for
invading, occupying and bombing nations, but little for health and
education.
While pols are seemingly unaware of this jarring equation, media lapdogs
are
nowadays handsomely rewarded for being consistently wrong and/or silent.

Enough on these failings.

The bigger dreams involve ceasing writing
reactively and
writing from a point of creation. Column writing is necessarily
reactive; I've
been writing about human/Indigenous rights, anti-immigrant hysteria and
U.S.-support of brutal military dictatorships since 1972. And now, with a
president lying us into Iraq, the instinct is to counter. The same holds
true
when society unabashedly scapegoats brown peoples, and treats migrants
as
disposable populations; witness the March 21 rally in Washington D.C.
More than
demanding reform, it was a demand by more than 100,000 marchers to treat
migrants as full human beings.
While the president's centrist approach to immigration reform
places a
heavy emphasis on draconian enforcement, conservatives will interpret
human
rights for migrants and "the path to legalization" as nothing short of
"freeing
the slaves" and a cause for insurrection.

Simply creating, without countering is akin to
burying one's
head in the sand. But there comes a time when always responding means
always
reacting - rarelycreating. But
because of permanent war, my focus as a writer lately, has become
heavily tiled
towards resistance. The creation element of who I am has suffered (this
is true
of most people). It's time for balance, thus a time to create.

Through the years, I've been exposed to great
maestros/maestras and great Tlamintini - great teachers - who have
shared their
knowledge and Huehuetlahtolli
(ancient guidances) about what it means to be human. Hereafter, I want
to
continue with those traditions and contribute to the definition of what
it
means to be human.

In discontinuing the column, I take no pleasure in
hereafter
writing strictly for an academic audience. It goes against who I am.
I've always
written for mass audiences, including writing Column of the Americas
since 1994
for more than 100 newspapers nationwide. For the first 12 years, it was
co-written
as a weekly, syndicated column with my wife, Patrisia Gonzales, for
Chronicle
Features, then Universal Press Syndicate (Her Patzin column is slated to
return). In writing for the academy, the audience is much smaller and
narrower,
while jargon is the preferred means of communication. It's not naturally
conducive for storytelling. Even beyond that, the acceptable experts
continue
to be "the usual suspects."

I will continue to assert that if our own aunts and
uncles,
parents, grandparents, neighbors and other elders - whom we used to
quote
frequently - can't understand our own writing, then what good did all
our years
of schooling accomplish?

As such, I plan to continue to make public the
knowledge
that has been passed on to me via elder knowledge - in forthcoming
essays and
columns and academic and non-academic books. I look forward to the day
when I
will not have to write for two separate audiences.

I also look forward to the day when we as a society
have
finally eliminated war as a "solution" to anything, and when society
ceases to
divide human beings into legal and illegal categories. I am convinced
that even
the most conservative of conservatives don't either want such a society.
I look
forward to the day when we can all truly say: San Ce Tojuan - Nosotros
Somos
Uno - We Are One.

It's not something that comes about solely through
dreaming.
One has to imagine it, fight for it, and then live it.