#living in both california and texas and having mexican family will do this to you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

antoine-roquentin · 3 years

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best result for the gop among asian people since 2008, latinx people since 2004, and black people since reagan got 14%, tying bob dole’s 12% in 1996. weirdly, people are reading blame into these charts when it’s clear that some sober-minded analysis should be done as to why the supposedly more racist candidate doubled his vote among black women. when you remember that biden wrote the 1994 crime bill and that racists like richard spencer, curtis yarvin, rahm emanuel, madeleine albright, bill kristol, max boot, jeffrey goldberg, bret stephens, george will, rick wilson, eliot cohen, stanley mcchrystal, william mcraven, miles taylor, tony blair, rick snyder, david cameron, moe davis, joe lieberman, and others felt comfortable enough to endorse and vote for him, people responsible for untold numbers of deaths, then it starts to make a bit more sense.

this all brings to mind a new york times article from september:

The results are sobering. We began by asking eligible voters how “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.”

Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos.

These numbers do not translate directly into support for the Republican Party; too many other factors are at play. Nevertheless, the results tell us something important: a majority across the groups we surveyed did not repudiate Trump-style rhetoric as obviously racist and divisive, but instead agreed with it.

Hispanics, of course, are no more monolithic than any other group, and internal differences influenced how individuals reacted. The single biggest factor was how respondents thought about Hispanic racial identity. More than whether the individual was Mexican-American or from Cuba, young or old, male or female, from Texas, Florida or California, how the person perceived the racial identity of Latinos as a group shaped his or her receptivity to a message stoking racial division.

Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color.

In contrast, the majority rejected this designation. They preferred to see Hispanics as a group integrating into the American mainstream, one not overly bound by racial constraints but instead able to get ahead through hard work.

The minority of Latinos who saw the group as people of color were more liberal in their views regarding government and the economy, and strongly preferred Democratic messages to the dog-whistle message. For the majority of Latinos, however, the standard Democratic frames tied or lost to the racial fear message. In other words, Mr. Trump’s competitiveness among Latinos is real.

But our research also suggests good news. There’s a winning message Mr. Biden and his party can deliver that resonates with most Hispanics no matter how they conceptualize the group’s racial identity.

The key is to link racism and class conflict. The pivot we recommend was also the most convincing message we tested among whites and African-Americans.

Democrats should call for Americans to unite against the strategic racism of powerful elites who stoke division and then run the country for their own benefit. This is not to deny the reality of pervasive societal racism. But it does direct attention away from whites in general and toward the powerful elites who benefit from divide-and-conquer politics.

This is the race-class approach that one of us helped pioneer. It fuses issues of racial division and class inequality, and by doing so shifts the basic “us versus them” story — the staple of most political messaging — away from “whites versus people of color” to “us all against the powerful elites pushing division.”

Here’s what this looks like:

We had come so far, but now Covid-19 threatens our families — for instance with health risks, record unemployment and losing the businesses we worked hard to build. To overcome these challenges, we need to pull together no matter our race or ethnicity. But instead of uniting us, certain politicians make divisions worse, insulting and blaming different groups. When they divide us, they can more easily rig our government and the economy for their wealthy campaign donors. When we come together by rejecting racism against anyone, we can elect new leaders who support proven solutions that help all working families.

This message was more convincing than the dog-whistle message among Hispanics no matter how they saw the group’s racial identity. It also beat the dog-whistle message among African-Americans and whites.

To understand why this works, it helps to compare it to the standard Democratic responses to Mr. Trump’s messages stoking racial fear.

One standard reaction is to directly challenge Mr. Trump as a bigot while also condemning structural racism. We tested a message like this. It said, in part,

Certain politicians promote xenophobia, racism and division. And it’s not just their words. It’s their policies, too. We see it in how they rip families apart at the border. And in how the police profile, imprison and kill Black people.

Compared with the dog-whistle fear message, this “call out racism” message lost among whites, perhaps unsurprisingly. It also lost among those Latinos who did not perceive themselves as people of color.

Denouncing racism against Latinos seems like an obvious strategy to those of us who see ourselves as people of color and are outraged by Mr. Trump’s denigrating language and his administration’s violence toward Latin-American immigrants. Yet this approach ignores the fact that our racial self-conception is not shared by a majority of Hispanics, who seem to balk at understanding themselves as people of color under racist attack.

The other standard Democratic response to dog whistling is to sidestep racial issues as much as possible. Let’s call this the “colorblind” approach, which we also tested. Our version partly said,

We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, but Covid-19 illnesses and deaths are worse here than almost anywhere else. We must elect new leaders who have a plan and are ready to build this country back, better.

This approach seeks to build a coalition by emphasizing shared concerns, for instance around health care or the economy, while avoiding divisive conversations about racism. But it is dog-whistle racism that cleaved the white working and middle classes from the Democratic Party in the first place, and failing to counter that strategy directly leaves its potency intact. In our research, the colorblind message basically tied the racial fear message among whites as well as the majority of Hispanics.

In contrast, Democrats can build common cause across economic classes and racial groups with a race-class approach.

We tested seven race-class messages woven around different issues, including immigration reform and criminal justice. Among whites — often seen as more likely to be comfortable with messages that avoid challenging racism — all seven race-class messages beat the colorblind narrative. Indeed, five beat or tied the dog-whistle message, something the colorblind message failed to accomplish.

Framing racism as a class weapon also proved effective at nurturing support for racial justice reforms. The race-class approach urges people to view the real threat in their lives as emanating from powerful elites stoking division, not from supposedly dangerous minorities.

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ren1327 · 3 years

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Sweater Weather ch.3

Emerald Isle was covered in moss and rocks where they docked, the rocks and sand giving way to grassy hills and a dense forest of pine trees and shrubs where the side of a large house peeked out from behind them.

Owen took their bags after he had tied off the boat, Kenji leading Ben up some wooden stairs and on a brick path through the trees.

“Wow.” Ben said. “It smells amazing out here.”

“Smells amazing?” Kenji asked, glancing at Ben.

“Well, I…I haven’t been around real pine. It’s either been a candle or something already dying slowly for the sake of a holiday.” Ben said, shrugging at the end.

“Oh…I never thought of it like that…not a lot of traditional pine trees in Cali.” Kenji said. “You probably haven’t even seen snow.”

“No. And the funny thing is, my parents are, well, were, Seattle natives. I’ve lived in Texas and California my whole life. I’ve always wanted to come here. We planned to when my mom got better but…”

Ben’s smile fell and he looked at the trees in pain, closing his eyes for a moment. Kenji looked around to see Owen making his way up the path towards them. He grabbed Ben’s hand and led him along.

“Uh…M-My Dad likes the trees and we even have an orchard in the back. I think we have apples, peaches, almonds and a pomegranate tree in the green house.” Kenji said. “In summer, I bring back so much fruit from here.”

“That actually sounds great.” Ben said with a smile. “Smoothies galore.”

“Mom loves her trees and uses them for teas and jams, so…indulge her for me?” He asked. “She hasn’t really…nailed the flavor…”

Ben chuckled and hugged his arm as Owen got closer.

“Got it, Honey.” Ben said and Kenji nearly tripped.

“On your left, Lovebirds!” Owen called and walked past them with their bags.

“W-What?” Kenji asked once Owen was out of earshot. “Why did you…what was that?”

“A pet name?” Ben asked, raising a brow. “What would you call me?”

“Ben…ny?”

“No. Something else.” Ben said quickly.

“Babe?”

“That’ll do.” He said.

They continued to walk up the path, then stopped, Kenji noticing Ben staring at the house as they came up to it.

It looked like a Californian lake house; wooden with large glass windows and a balcony with a sturdy awning, a fire pit on the second floor awning, wooden steps leading down to another area where there was sand going into the dark blue water, a huge porch and yard and so many trees around it, as if hidden.

“Is that a lighthouse?!” Ben yelled when he looked up the hill.

“Yeah. Just in case.” Kenji said and Ben looked up at the regal looking stone structure.

“C…Can we go up it?”

“Yeah, sure. We can explore tomorrow though. Parents and sister.” He reminded Ben, who nodded, but let his eyes linger on the lighthouse a few seconds longer.

Kenji led Ben to the porch and knocked on the door despite Owen walking in a few seconds earlier.

A short, plump Mexican woman opened the door and cried out excitedly, scooping Kenji into her arms and despite being a full foot shorter than him, lifted him up and spun around.

“Mom!” He squawked and blushed. “Not in front of Ben!”

She dropped Kenji, who staggered before standing straight. He cleared his throat.

“Mom. This is Ben. Ben, this is my mother, Candela Kon.”

“Oh, baby, you can call me Candy!” She said and hugged Ben in her soft warm arms, Ben getting a whiff of cocoa butter and vanilla.

Candy, indeed.

She had the same golden skin and dark hair Kenji had. But hers was curly and in lose spirals that was tied back into a high ponytail with a white velvet scrunchy. She wore a thick red tunic over brown yoga pants and furred boot slippers. She had on tinted lip balm Ben often used on interviews and…

“It’s great to finally meet you!” Ben said, smiling brightly when she put him down.

“Oh? Has Kenji told you anything about me?”

“He may have mentioned gardening and teas.” Ben said. “Of which I am eager to see and taste.”

Candy giggled and elbowed Kenji. “You got yourself a keeper, Mijo.”

Kenji let out a huff but smiled regardless.

“Your Father is on a call right now, but I know someone in the sunroom who would be sooooo excited to see you!”

Kenji grinned and sped past her.

“Son?” She called.

“Yeah?”

“Your boyfriend?” She asked.

Kenji sped back and took Ben’s hand. “Right, sorry Babe.”

“It’s Carmen, I get it.” Ben said dismissively, noting how Candy beamed at Ben’s reaction.

“Aw, you’re still a doting brother!” Candy teased.

“I think it’s cute.” Ben said and Kenji smiled at him.

“Ready to meet the most important lady in my life excluding my mother?”

“Good save.” Ben teased and Kenji chuckled, leading him past a large sitting area with a plush red sofa set and armchairs around a curved tv and sound system mounted on the wall and a fireplace to the left, burning away fragrant wood.

They walked down a wide hallway, the walls decorated with family pictures and photos of the ocean and various sights around the island and Seattle itself.

“You guys really like Seattle.” Ben said.

“It might be a little farther, but Dad has an office building there and a condo where Mom and Carmen chill during summer weekends. We used to live in Cali, but after I left, I guess they relocated to Washington for good. Especially after the bullying…”

“It’s amazing. What parents will do for their children.” Ben said softly.

Kenji paused outside a door and closed his eyes before sighing. “Yeah. It is.”

He opened a white door with a large glass panel with a soft gauzy white curtain with reflective green sequins stitched in them in patterns that looked like ivy or vines on the inside. The walls of the room were a light minty green with metal work on the walls of sunflowers, daisies and chrysanthemums. Two walls had large windows that opened inwards to let in the cold air, another fireplace sheltered from the breeze and with a low back black cushioned wide bench with thick legs looked to be made from bleached driftwood before it. Most of the furniture looked to be made from sturdy carved driftwood, pale gray cushions and blankets on it, along with a basket piled high with furry or fleece throws and a few bookshelf cabinets with thick glass sheltering the treasures inside.

But before the fireplace on the wide bedlike bench, with green led light cat eared headphones over her head and staring at her switch as she played what Ben noticed was Stardew Valley, was Kenji’s treasure.

She was also plump and short like her mother, with her big brown lashed eyes and full lips. Her skin was very pale and her waist length black hair pin straight. Her hair was dyed green about five inches from her scalp and in two high pigtails. And her lips were chapped from how she was biting them.

She wore blue jean capris despite the cold weather, a black t-shirt and red and pink socks with a pink cartoon lion and a thick looking sword on them. She laid on her stomach and Ben saw her phone was on a podcast; episode 68 of King Falls Am, so she couldn’t hear Kenji go behind her.

Kenji poked the small of her back, causing her to scream and pull her switch to her chest, kicking out as she rolled over.

“If I die in the mines, I’m so gonna…Ji?” She looked down at her game to pause it and place on the back of the bench as she jumped up and ran around to hug her older brother.

“You did come!” She squealed.

“I did!” Kenji yelled back happily. “I missed you so much!”

“Dad said you would be coming, and I was so excited because I thought you were still in India. How was it? Did you eat a lot of spicy food? Did you pet an elephant?”

“Uh, I kinda just bummed around a camp, kiddo.” Kenji said. “I was…I wasn’t in a really good headspace…”

“Oh. I get it.” She said softly and rubbed her arm, then noticed Ben.

“Hi, Carmen.” Ben said nervously.

“Hi?” She asked.

“Oh, Carmen, this is Ben. He’s my…my boyfriend.” Kenji said.

Carmen looked from Ben to Kenji and back.

“Oh, no, he’s way too good looking for you.” She said, shaking her head.

“Hey!” Kenji yelled.

Ben watched them bicker for a bit and smiled as Kenji pulled his sister close and started giving the smaller Kon sibling a noogie. He reached into his book bag and quickly plucked a receipt out of a bag, holding it out to them.

“Kenji?” He called and they both paused, Kenji grinning when he saw the black bag.

“We found something you might like.” Kenji said and took the bag, giving it to Carmen.

She reached in and pulled out a small Miles Morales plush gasping and hugging it to her chest.

“Oh, my gosh! I love him! How did you know?”

“It was mostly Ben.” Kenji said. “He made me watch the movie and I saw your snapchat posts and we saw it, so…”

She hugged Kenji, then Ben. “Thank you guys so much! I’ve asked Owen to keep an eye out and I’d pay him back, but he never understands what I mean!”

She smiled and hugged the plush again.

“Kenji, get in here!” She said, picking up her phone to take a picture with him. “Ben, you too!”

Ben awkwardly stood next to Kenji, who threw an arm around his waist as Carmen held up the plush and snapped a picture, Ben happy he smiled at the last second, not looking too awkward.

“Um…can I post that Ben’s your boyfriend?” Carmen asked, lowering her phone to look at her brother. “She…She kinda follows me still.”

“Yeah.” Kenji said. “Go ahead.”

“Ben?” She looked at him.

“I’m out and good. Go ahead.” He said, waving his hand.

“Okay. Annnnnd…post!” She said and smiled at the picture. Her smile fell and she touched under her chin.

“Carmen?” Ben asked.

“Oh!” She blinked and smiled. “So um…was the flight alright?”

“Yeah. Hey…” Kenji hugged her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I am. I promise. I start my new school after break so, that’s fun.” She said.

“New schools are fun.” Ben said. “I had to start a new school too.”

“Oh. Why?” Carmen asked.

“…I was bullied. Really bad. Like, I could’ve died from an asthma attack bad.”

“What?” Carmen squawked.

“I was left outside overnight with my hands tied. I couldn’t get to my inhaler while I was panicking.” Ben said, looking at the floor. “No one really knew I had asthma. Inhalers cost like…six hundred dollars. And my bullies…I was scared they would take it or use it as ammunition.”

Carmen hugged Ben tight.

“You’re okay, right?” She asked, voice wobbly. “Like…now?”

“Yeah. My mom moved us to San Antonio where I met the coolest people and even moved to California with them. They’re going to move back again, so…I guess I’ll just find my own way from there.”

“You could move in with Kenji!” She said. “Since you’re boyfriends and all!”

“Uh, I think he wants to go back to Texas though, kiddo. That’s where he wants to set up shop.” Kenji said awkwardly.

“Long distance sucks!” Carmen huffed. “And besides! You can move into our old neighborhood when I was a baby!”

She turned to Ben. “We moved to Cali when I was like, six. And now…”

“Washington is really pretty.” Ben said with a tilt of his head.

“And I get to have so many cute raincoats and boots!” She said excitedly.

“Carmen hates the sun.” Kenji said.

“If you live in Texas, we can visit you as much as we want with Daddy’s plane!” She said. “And then you guys can come see us when summer gets too unbearable.”

Ben smiled.

“Any excuse to see you, Carmen.” He said. “You’re really cool for a high schooler.”

She blushed and smiled. “Thanks. I um…thanks.”

There was a knock on the doorframe and Ben felt his face heat when he saw the man.

“Hello.” He said, looking at Ben. “We have yet to meet. I am Kenji’s father, Kosei.”

He held out a hand and when Ben shook it, in engulfed his own smaller one in a warm, strong grip.

The man looked just like Kenji, save lighter hair with streaks of gray and a close trimmed beard. Ben would say he looked like a neater version of his favorite Overwatch character.

“Ben Pincus.” He said softly.

Kosei made a puzzled face. “Pincus? I feel like I know that name.”

Ben shrugged a bit, noting how the man had released his hand.

“Welcome to our home, Ben.” He said and smiled warmly, Ben blushing harder.

Kenji blinked. And paled when he saw how pink Ben’s blush was.

‘…left overnight with my hands tied…’

He remembered something he had long buried away.

“Fuck.” He said out loud.

#jw sweater weather #jw fanfic #jw benji #benji #kenji x ben #kenji and ben #kenji kon #ben pincus #camp cretaceous fanfic #camp cretaceous sweater weather

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Latinos, Sanders's secret weapon in Nevada, could make him unstoppable on Super Tuesday

https://news.yahoo.com/latinos-sanderss-secret-weapon-in-nevada-could-make-him-unstoppable-on-super-tuesday-015922411.html

BERNIE SANDERS SECRET WEAPON, LATINOS, COULD MAKE HIM UNSTOPPABLE GOING INTO SUPER TUESDAY

By Hunter Walker and Andrew Romano | Published February 22, 2020 | Yahoo News | Posted February 23, 2020 |

LAS VEGAS — Bernie Sanders’s Nevada caucus campaign ended with a convincing win Saturday afternoon, thanks in large measure to a 37-percentage-point victory among Latino caucus-goers. But the seeds of that victory were sown five years ago when a staffer on Sanders’s first presidential bid had trouble reading a Spanish website.

It was Memorial Day weekend 2015, about a month after the Vermont senator launched his long-shot challenge to Hillary Clinton. Sanders was short on resources; his staff was a skeleton crew, with no one who could translate Spanish. So the campaign summoned Chuck Rocha, the founder and president of Solidarity Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in reaching Latinos and blacks that was launched by Rocha in 2010. He charged Sanders triple his usual rate to work on the holiday.

“I remember sending him an invoice for $824, which was a big invoice for me,” Rocha told Yahoo News in an extensive interview five days before the Nevada caucus. “Little did I know that that $800 invoice would turn into millions and millions of dollars of work for Bernie Sanders.”

In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted two Sanders events, claiming the candidate wasn’t paying enough attention to racial issues. Jeff Weaver, the 2016 campaign manager, hired Solidarity Strategies to ensure that the senator’s work was, as Rocha put it, “reflective of the larger diverse communities.” Soon Rocha was consulting on minority hiring, outreach and advertising for Sanders. By the end of the race he was in charge of all of the campaign’s print communications.

Now Rocha, a 51-year-old self-described “Mexican redneck” who campaigns wearing a cowboy hat and driving a rented pickup truck, has become a leader of Sanders’s 2020 operation. While he remains in charge of his firm, Rocha officially joined the campaign last year as a senior adviser with a broad purview that includes general strategy, hiring staff and overseeing print ads and merchandise. Rocha also crafts the campaign’s Spanish-language ads on television, radio and the internet. If anyone is responsible for the huge Latino outreach effort that has helped propel Sanders to the front of the Democratic pack, it’s Rocha.

The innovative program is a dramatic contrast to 2016, when Clinton had highly specialized minority outreach operations and Sanders struggled to woo voters of color.

“This time around the Sanders campaign really has invested, and you see them everywhere,” says an operative who worked on Latino outreach for the Clinton campaign in 2016 and then worked with a 2020 candidate who left the race. “They are the ones who have consistently shown up at community events, in radio ads and newspapers. It’s very different from what they did in 2016. You have to understand the community first and then build your program around it — and I think they've done that."

That strategy could help make Sanders the nominee. The last time the senator competed in the Nevada caucuses, in 2016, he lost to Clinton by 8 percentage points. The defeat blunted Sanders’s momentum after his near-victory in Iowa and his New Hampshire landslide, and it put Clinton on a trajectory to win the nomination.

Yet there was an upside for Sanders that day: The Nevada entrance poll showed him beating the former secretary of state by 8 points among Latinos. The exact percentages were later disputed — the sample size was tiny, and precinct-level data suggested that Clinton did better than the poll indicated — but the larger implication was clear. In a race against America’s best-known Democrat, Sanders could hold his own in the Latino community.

The revelation took the senator’s own team by surprise.

“We didn't learn ’til the campaign was almost over how popular we were with Latinos,” Rocha said. “We had an idea, you know; 19-to-22-year-old Latinos thought Bernie was cool in ’16. But we didn’t realize that we could win their votes the way that we did, and we didn’t have enough time to take advantage of actually building the infrastructure to capture those votes.”

The lessons of 2016 gave Rocha an advantage heading into 2020 — and it was an edge that paid off Saturday, when entrance polls showed Sanders topping his nearest rival, Joe Biden, 53 percent to 16 percent among Nevada’s Latino caucus-goers. The same statistical caveats from 2016 still apply today. But this wasn’t an isolated incident. In Iowa, the entrance poll showed Sanders winning 43 percent of nonwhite voters; the next closest candidate was Pete Buttigieg with 15 percent. In New Hampshire, Sanders was nearly as dominant, winning nonwhite voters by 18 points and Latino voters by 22, according to the exit poll. Across the board, national surveys also show Sanders with anywhere from 30 percent to nearly 50 percent of the Latino vote.

To date, the Democratic Party has awarded only 2.5 percent of its 3,989 pledged delegates, so Sanders’s growing strength with Latinos hasn’t made much of a dent in the delegate math. But that’s about to change on Super Tuesday (March 3), when nearly 40 percent of the remaining pledged delegates will be doled out.

The good news for Sanders is that Super Tuesday’s two biggest prizes are California (415 pledged delegates) and Texas (228 pledged delegates) — states that also boast the largest Latino primary electorates in America (31 percent and 32 percent, respectively).

The calendar, in other words, is about to heavily favor the candidate who’s leading among Latinos. Mathematically, it could even make that candidate unstoppable.

The Sanders campaign has been preparing for this moment since last summer. On Saturday, the candidate skipped the usual in-state victory party in Nevada and traveled instead to Texas for a series of rallies. Two polls released this month show the senator leading in the Lone Star State for the first time. The day before the caucus, Sanders opted to leave Nevada to campaign in California, where the latest surveys show him ahead of the competition by more than 10 points overall and by more than 20 points among Latinos. Along with Texas and California, Rocha noted that Florida and Arizona primaries are both coming up, are heavily Latino, and are “loaded with delegates.”

“The math is right,” he said.

If Sanders wins both California and Texas, he will likely amass an insurmountable lead in the delegate count — and Rocha’s innovative Latino outreach effort will be a big reason why. Rocha believes campaigns have long botched their Latino outreach efforts by relying on largely white teams, insufficient investment and messages that aren’t “culturally competent.” He has sought to mount a push for Sanders that is historically diverse, large and involves a tailored advertising blitz.

“People say Latinos don’t vote. It’s because motherf***ers don’t ask them to vote,” said Rocha.

With his East Texas drawl and colorful sayings, Rocha is a natural raconteur who veers between swagger and self-deprecation. He’s clearly fond of telling his personal story. It begins in the town of Tyler, where he was born to two teenagers: a Mexican immigrant father and a white mother. After Rocha’s dad left five years later, he grew up eating “government cheese” in a mobile home on the grounds of his mother’s parents’ farm.

When Rocha was 18 years old, he had a child of his own. The experience led him to reconnect with his own father, who got him a job at the local tire factory. The gig ended up being Rocha’s entrée into union organizing — and ultimately, politics.

“Nobody in my family was involved in politics at any level,” Rocha said. “Nobody in my family had ever really graduated from high school, much less college. I was not a rabid activist in any way. I just wanted to get off my regular job to do union work, if I could, so I could drink more beer.”

Rocha became an officer with the local chapter of the rubber workers union, which merged with the United Steelworkers of America in 1995. Through the union hall, Rocha also began working on Democratic campaigns. In 1998 the national union summoned Rocha to Pittsburgh to serve as political director at the age of 30.

A decade later, Rocha left the union to start his firm. His career survived a potentially fatal setback in 2013 when he pleaded guilty to one felony count of embezzling from the union during his tenure as political director. He was sentenced to two years’ probation and fined $2,000 after paying about $12,000 in restitution. Rocha describes the case as a partisan prosecution but also admits he “totally messed up” his expense reports, and he’s well aware the issue could have made him a liability for a presidential candidate.

“I am a convicted felon,” Rocha said. “And when you work in politics, that's not cool.”

Rocha claimed he tried to work for Clinton’s 2016 campaign before Sanders entered the field but wasn’t hired because his conviction came up during vetting. He nearly choked up while recounting the early meeting where he told Sanders and Weaver about his background. According to Rocha, they were both adamant that he shouldn’t spend his life paying for a past mistake.

“I’m not politically afraid of this story at all,” Weaver said in 2016 after Politico highlighted Rocha’s conviction, adding that he wanted the world to see that Sanders believed in giving a former felon a chance. “Please, I’m asking you to print.”

Staff diversity has, in turn, become the cornerstone of Rocha’s Latino outreach efforts for Sanders. He said the campaign has “Latinos in senior management in every department of the headquarters and in every state” — including 76 Latino staffers in Nevada alone, where Sanders also opened 11 offices and spent more than $3 million on Spanish-language advertising. Despite the encouraging signs from 2016, not everyone on Sanders’s campaign thought that a substantial investment in the Latino electorate — which typically turns out at a rate of less than 50 percent — would pay off. But Sanders himself was a believer, according to Rocha.

“It's something he talks to me about every time he sees me,” Rocha said of Sanders. “‘How is it going? What are we doing?’ He wants to know because he’s such an organizer. … He wants new people to vote, and he knows that there’s a treasure trove in the Latino community.”

Rocha’s ads for Sanders aren’t straightforward translations of his English messages; they are written specifically for Latinos and focus on the aspects of Sanders’s platform that most resonate with that audience, including raising the minimum wage, eliminating student debt, reinstating the DACA program, breaking up ICE and the Border Patrol and placing a moratorium on deportations to allow for an audit of past immigration policies.

The pitch is also heavy on Sanders’s own immigration story, which has been much more central to his 2020 campaign than it was in 2016; in fact, the first Spanish-language ad that Rocha ran in each medium focused on Sanders’s father coming to the United States from Europe “broke” and unable to speak English.

“Guess what? That's my grandfather’s story,” Rocha said. “That’s Latinos … somebody in our family. It’s their story.”

But while the overarching messages may be similar, the Sanders camp also adjusts its ads for different audiences within the Latino community. Ads targeted at Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans have slightly different scripts; print and radio ads designed to reach older Latinos have a different emphasis than digital commercials. And some ads aimed at Latinos aren’t in Spanish at all. In Iowa, where the population skews toward more recent immigrants, the campaign largely spoke Spanish; on Spotify, where they’re aiming for young Latinos, many ads are entirely in English.

Because Rocha’s own Spanish is “horrible,” he mainly relies on a 30-year-old undocumented immigrant named Luis Alcauter to design and write them. (Sanders speaks the language haltingly; Rocha told The Hill that he discourages his Anglo clients from using Spanish on the trail “because it normally does not go well.”) Rocha describes Alcauter as his “right-hand man.” He may also be the brash Rocha’s polar opposite: a soft-spoken Mormon who came to California’s Central Valley from Mexico as a teenager.

“It’s an incredible opportunity and a lot of responsibility to make sure that I represent my community and I talk to them and they’re able to understand,” Alcauter told Yahoo News.

Alcauter and the other Latinos on Sanders’s team aren’t just helping with campaigning. They’ve also influenced policy and helped craft Sanders��s immigration platform.

“We care about the issue, and it affects our lives,” said Alcauter. “So we wanted to make sure that we gather together, we put our minds together and we work on something that we're going to be proud of.”

It’s a clear example of one of Rocha’s core beliefs — that minority outreach work should be fully integrated into larger operations.

“We do all of this without a Latino department,” Rocha explained. “I was sick and tired of Latinos being window dressings for campaigns ... of seeing Latino outreach programs that were siloed off, underfunded, understaffed and never listened to.”

According to Belén Sisa, another undocumented staffer, this integration is emblematic of Sanders’s approach to politics.

“It shows what a Bernie Sanders presidency will be,” Sisa told Yahoo News. “It will be the people who were in the frontlines fighting for these things for years who are going to be putting together the solutions.”

Besides advertising, the Sanders campaign is reaching out to Latino voters personally. Bilingual staffers and volunteers are deployed to voters’ homes and have mailed out handwritten notes. Rocha has used databases to identify phone numbers that likely belong to Latinos to receive bilingual texts.

Over the past eight months, Sanders’s Nevada campaign hosted a slew of community events while also dispatching its massive volunteer army to knock on doors around the state. The day before the caucuses, the Sanders campaign announced that it had visited 500,000 homes in the state.

Jose Mariscal-Cruz, a 23-year-old Mexican-American from Reno, told Yahoo News that he made at least 2,000 of those visits. He took a year off from college to work as a field organizer for the Sanders campaign in Las Vegas. On Monday, Yahoo News followed Mariscal-Cruz as he campaigned among the colorfully painted bungalows in the heavily Latino neighborhood of East Las Vegas. He was accompanied by José La Luz, a prominent Puerto Rican labor activist from New York who served as a surrogate for Sanders in Nevada ahead of the caucus. The pair visited about 40 homes to deliver their fluent, finely tuned message to potential voters.

At two of the homes, Spanish-speaking elderly residents indicated that they were from Guanajuato in Mexico. Mariscal-Cruz rattled off his own family ties to the region, and La Luz piped in with a few lines from a ballad about the area by the famed Mexican singer Pedro Infante. The song brought a smile from a woman named Maria who said she and her husband had already voted for Sanders.

“We have a lot of faith,” Maria said.

“With faith, we can move mountains, God willing,” La Luz replied. “We know that the vote of our people is the vote that will be the difference.”

The Sanders campaign has already set up similar ground operations in California and beyond. During a debate watch party Wednesday at Sanders’s East Los Angeles field office, L.A. County Area Director Daniel Andalon and L.A. County Area Field Director Lewis Myers stepped outside to discuss how the operation in America’s most Latino metropolis has expanded over the last eight months.

“I get goosebumps just thinking about it,” said Andalon, a longtime operative who managed Hilda Solis’s winning 2014 campaign for county supervisor. “In the summer it was just us. We were meeting at McDonald’s and Denny’s and working out of our homes, much to our wives’ chagrin.”

According to Andalon, “Sanders has not spared any expense here.” That means opening four offices in L.A. County alone — including East Los Angeles, where the population is more than 96 percent Latino.

“We’ve knocked on hundreds of thousands of doors and made millions of phone calls out of this office,” Myers explained. “Last weekend we knocked on 62,000 doors. The weekend before that was 58,000 doors.”

As a result, Andalon said, “we’ve been able to broaden Bernie’s base to include “a lot more brown faces.”

Both Andalon and Myers said they haven’t seen their rivals competing for Latino votes in the area, with less than two weeks until the vote.

“There is no one who is running a program this robust,” Andalon said.

For Sanders, the hope is that California as a whole is a similar story to Nevada. The campaign is the largest in the field, with 105 staffers and 22 offices statewide — “most of them,” according to California State Director Rafael Návar, “in heavily Latino communities,” with “more in the [blue-collar] Central Valley than any other region.” Sanders’s own travel to the state has followed a similar pattern. According to a tally compiled by the Sacramento Bee, Sanders has held far more public events (37) in the state than any other candidate.

“Bernie came to Coachella for an office opening — a place no presidential candidate has come to since JFK,” Návar told Yahoo News. “That’s just not a place you have a presence usually. We’re in every congressional district and we’re playing for every delegate in the state. We’re not just focused on the urban hubs.”

In 2016, Sanders hoped to make a last stand against Clinton in California’s June primary, but he lost by more than a dozen points in part because she trounced him in the state’s top Latino areas. Sanders’s team also wasn’t sophisticated enough to focus its efforts on the less-populated, less-contested inland areas where they could claim a disproportionate number of delegates, some of which are awarded by congressional district. Ultimately, Sanders carried just eight of California’s 53 districts, allowing Clinton to widen her delegate lead and clinch the nomination. But Návar insisted that “having that experience means we have a lot stronger strategy than in the past.

“In 2016, we weren’t here until a month before the election. This time we’ve been very strategic about where we’ve homed in and are building up our base,” he said.

And Sanders’s campaign isn’t just courting Latinos in states like California and Nevada. Latinos make up just about 6 percent of the population in Iowa, which was the first state to vote in caucuses on Feb. 3. Still, Rocha mounted a Latino outreach effort there. According to a report from the UCLA Latino Politics and Policy Initiative, Sanders won a majority of the vote at Iowa’s high-density Latino caucus locations. That edge helped Sanders win more votes than anyone else in the crucial first state.

Rocha said the results in Iowa helped soothe skeptics of the campaign and gave him “some job security” by demonstrating that the campaign had not “spent all this money for nothing.” Rocha and his team plan to continue targeting smaller Latino populations in other key states, such as Wisconsin.

For Rocha and the other Latinos on his team — particularly the undocumented immigrants — the effort is deeply meaningful. Over lunch at a Mexican café in East Las Vegas, Sisa said the experience was beyond her “wildest dreams” — an opportunity to make the case that “immigrants deserve better, regardless of being documented or not.”

“I think no one [else] has been bold enough to say, ‘You may be undocumented, but you deserve health care,’” Sisa said. “‘You may be undocumented, but you deserve tuition-free college’ — because we all deserve those things.”

With his decisions to limit legal migration, end the DACA program and separate undocumented immigrants from their children, President Trump loomed large over the conversation.

So, it turns out, did his plane. In keeping with his strategy to shadow the Democratic primary by holding rallies in each early voting state, Trump visited Las Vegas during caucus week. As Alcauter left the café, he pointed to the sky.

“Look,” he said. “It’s Air Force One.”

As an undocumented immigrant, Alcauter said he believes Trump “from day one has been fighting against me.” But if the campaign is successful, Alcauter could go from feeling targeted by the president to being on his staff and taking flight with Sanders on Air Force One.

“I definitely dream about it,” Alcauter said. “That’s the reason we’re doing the work we’re doing.”

_____

#super tuesday #bernie sanders #bernie sander for president #bernie 2020 #2020 presidential election #2020 candidates #2020 election #politics and government #political science #us politics #politics #justice democrats #democratic party #democrats #u.s. presidential elections #u.s. news #election security #latino #minorities

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rulesofthebeneath · 5 years

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how bout a dance: part 1

<AN> Ok... so this is the Bullshit. It’s a bit of a departure from what I normally write, but I had this idea and it kinda got stuck in my head, and with the help of @euphonyinestetica and @ajaysbhandari it kinda came to life. It’s basically a post-college ajay x mc au, where basically they broke up when he went to college and now, well... you’ll have to read to find out. I’m really excited to share this all with you guys. Projecting a total of 13 parts, major OC usage. Please please let me know what you think, Feedback is Life. Crediting: @euphonyinestetica as cowriter and fierce editor. Tagging: @pixelburied, @witchiegirl, @lilmissperfectlyimperfect, @anlashokk, @itsbrindleybinch. I hope y’all enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it! </AN>

The cold March wind blew Grace’s hair across her face, temporarily blinding her. She sighed with thinly veiled exasperation and reached up to fumble it into a messy ponytail with numb fingers. She hitched her scarf up to cover her exposed neck and buried her nose into it, trying to shield herself from the cold. Continuing along 43rd Street, her chapped hands made their way back into her coat pockets. She cursed her Brooklyn apartment for being so far away, she cursed the six hours she’d already spent on her feet waitressing that day, and she cursed the entire state of New York for being so damn cold.

She finally reached the theatre, a tiny thing nestled between shops and restaurants on the upper west side, and silently slipped inside the stage door. It was still thirty minutes before rehearsal was supposed to start, but Grace took the saying “early is on time, on time is late, late is fired” to heart and didn’t want to leave anything to chance. She reached the stage and set her things down in a chair. Then, she went off in search of a bathroom so she could change into her dance clothes.

A few minutes later, she was back onstage and a few of the other actors were there, along with the director, Charlie. Charlie was a man nearing his sixties with an impressive head of hair that he insisted was real. From the two rehearsals they’d had so far—the table read and the first sing-through—Grace gathered that he was the gentle kind of man, a rare find in New York City. He tended towards the eccentric in his creative decisions, but Grace had had worse directors. She was interested to see how he would direct this musical. She shot him a smile in greeting—he was in the middle of a conversation with their producer—and then sat down near a group of the other actors to start stretching.

The musical she’d been cast in was Bonnie & Clyde, and Grace had never been more excited to be in a show. Well, maybe she had been more excited for her first show ever back in high school, but this was the first time she was the lead in a paying production. It didn’t pay much, granted, but that was what her day job (and Actor’s Equity) was for. She was in theatre for the passion, the heart, the excitement, and she was very eager to see what doors this would open for her. Grace had heard of people getting discovered in even less prestigious theatres.

A guy not much older than her, Kevin, played Clyde. He plopped himself down beside Grace and offered her a fist bump.

“Your hair looks messed up,” he said by way of a greeting. “It’s hella windy out there.”

Grace rolled her eyes but paused her stretching to attempt to pull her hair into a reasonable braid.

“Better?”

“Much,” he grinned at her. “How was the pub?”

“Same as always. Full of rude people. How was the drugstore?”

“About the same.” He sighed. “I can’t wait until tech week… Like yeah, all the ten of twelves will be hell but it’s a more pleasant hell than eight hours at the cash register.”

“Retweet,” Grace said absently. Her eyes followed the director as he climbed up on stage, having just ended his conversation. He was flanked by the stage manager and the producer, a middle-aged lady that Grace hadn’t met before but had seen watching the first read-through. She didn’t think it was normal for the producer to come to so many rehearsals, but she knew she was hardly an expert. Charlie clapped his hands once to draw the attention of all the actors and everyone’s attention turned to him.

“Actors,” he said in his booming voice. “I have an announcement. Last night, I was offered a job directing an off-Broadway production. I have loved the work that we’ve done in our short time here, but I have to do what’s best for my career. So I’m sorry to say that I will be leaving you, effective immediately.”

In the pause where he took a breath, Kevin muttered a shell-shocked “what the fuck” from beside her. Grace didn’t really know what to think. Her mind had gone blank, save for one phrase that she couldn’t stop repeating: failure. The first production that she was a lead in was now officially a failure. She shook her head as she realized that she was going to have to start the nerve-wracking audition process all over again, the processes that gave her twenty rejections before one measly job. The best job opportunity of her life so far: a failure.

The other actors had broken out into mutters too, all of them looking as shocked as Grace felt. A voice from the back spoke up above the noise and all eyes fell on her, a woman that Grace vaguely recalled as playing Blanche, as she stood up.

“So the show’s just done then?” she asked, her voice trembling but still somehow managing an accusatory tone. “After everything we’ve done?”

The director’s eyes widened. “No, no, of course not!” he stuttered, his hands flying up in front of his chest, taking a few steps back. “I’ve arranged for Annette Keiser,” he indicated the stressed producer, “to conduct interviews for a new director as quickly as possible. In fact, I believe her first appointment is in thirty minutes.”

“Yes, yes. We’ll have a new director by Monday, I promise you that you won’t be out of work. I know of a few promising young directors that are interested in the show that I’ve contacted since last night. I’ll make sure that we only get the best.” Annette announced in a strained voice, giving away how stressed the normally bubbly woman was. “Now, I have to go prepare for my first appointment. Everyone is dismissed until Monday.” With that, she and Charlie walked off the stage in opposite directions. The stage manager nodded at the group of actors for whom the shock still hadn’t worn off, then scurried off stage to inform the techs of the new development. The actress that played Blanche walked over to Grace and Kevin, both of whom were still sitting on the floor mid-stretch.

“Well, that was a surprise twist,” she said in a soft, lilting southern accent.

“No shit, Rosa,” Kevin chuckled, causing Grace to smile. He got up and started brushing off his pants. “Hopefully I’ll see you on Monday, Grace. You too, Rosa,” he said, then sauntered off the stage.

Rosa rolled her eyes in his direction, also biting back a laugh. She stuck out a hand to help Grace up. After a beat Grace took it, smiling.

“So I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink,” Rosa said. Her words broke a little of the worry in Grace’s heart, and she started to giggle.

“Where do you live? There’s a good pub in Brooklyn, does a nice fish and chips and an even better whiskey.”

“Ooh, fish and chips does seem like it would hit the spot. Whiskey too. I live in Brooklyn, so it sounds alright to me.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Neither stopped to change out of their dance clothes, but just bundled back up and threw their bags over their shoulders, and both recoiled as soon as the cold wind hit their faces.

“Ugh. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” Rosa complained. “The place I’m from, it never snows. The summer heat’s brutal, though.”

“Oh, where are you from?”

“Texas,” she answered in an exaggerated accent. “Real southern belle right here.”

“Damn,” Grace replied. “You’ll have to help me perfect my accent. This whole musical takes place there.”

“If there is a musical anymore,” Rosa rolled her eyes. “But anyways, enough about that. Where are you from?”

“Oregon,” Grace sighed. “But I went to southern California for college, so I’m not quite used to this cold either.”

“Oregon, huh? Farm girl?”

“Small town girl.” She hummed a couple bars of “Don’t Stop Believin’”, making Rosa laugh. “My parents own a diner. I think everyone was surprised when both me and my twin brother ditched Oregon for LA. We both went to USC, and he plays for the Chargers now. I guess in comparison I’m the underachiever,” she joked, trying to laugh off the accidental reveal of too much information. Rosa, bless her, smoothly ignored it and changed the subject.

“So your family’s all over the place, huh? Everyone I know is still in San Antonio. We’re all either there or Mexico, but I haven’t seen my Mexican family in a long time.”

Grace hummed in sympathy. “My twin and I were adopted. It was a closed adoption, so I still have no idea who my birth parents are, other than that they were Thai. My adoptive parents—my real parents—don’t have good relationships with their parents so I don’t have much extended family. Our family was basically the whole town.”

After a few steps in silence, Rosa spoke up again. “Well, I bet that soon enough both you and your brother will be big stars.”

“Aw, Rosa.”

“No, seriously though. You’re an amazing singer, I heard you during the first sing-through. I thought, damn, how does such a big voice come from such a little person?”

“I’m not that small!” Grace protested. Rosa just laughed from a height six inches taller than Grace. Grace adjusted her bag on her shoulder, accidentally hitting a passerby in the shoulder.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” She whipped her head around to apologize to him, tucking her bag closer to her. She'd only lived in New York City for a few months, and hadn't yet succumbed to the rudeness the people of the city were so known for.

“That’s okay!” he shouted over his shoulder, not even looking back. He must have been in a hurry. But when he turned his head, Grace thought the recognized him. The black mop of hair, the tortoiseshell glasses, the crooked grin that she’d barely caught before he turned away. She stopped in her tracks, dodging pedestrians to try and get a better look at the retreating man.

Rosa noticed Grace had stopped and walked back over.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just-” Grace started breathlessly. “I just... thought I saw someone I knew.”

Rosa raised an eyebrow.

“It probably wasn’t him. I haven’t seen him in, God, seven years? Yeah, no way that was him.”

“Is there a story there?” Rosa asked.

Grace’s face flushed a bit. “There is, but… you’ll have to buy me a few drinks first.”

“Hell, I’m not made of money,” Rosa laughed. “I live in a shoebox for 1300 a month, if I could buy you more than one drink I would.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll tell you later, it’s not anything too interesting.”

“Whatever you say.”

The two finally reached the Brooklyn pub after a long subway ride that was a welcome reprieve from the cold. The inside of the pub was warm with soft yellow lighting. It was clear that it was more of a hole-in-the-wall than anything classy, but they both were more comfortable with the casual setting. They both sat at the bar and the bartender made a beeline over.

“Hey, Grace! Back so soon?” he teased. Grace rolled her eyes.

“Just looking for some food and some drinks for my friend and me. Our director left the production, so we might be out of a job soon.”

Rosa swatted her. “Don’t say that! It’s bad luck.”

Grace turned to her in surprise. “You were saying the same thing not even an hour ago!”

“I’m trying to be optimistic!” Rosa retorted, making them both laugh. Grace turned back to the bartender.

“Aaron, do you know if anyone has a shift this weekend that needs to be picked up? I didn’t get scheduled at all.”

“We’re closing for a renovation this weekend, remember? Getting new wallpaper.”

Grace wrinkled her nose as she looked around at the peeling wallpaper, completely torn off in some places and horribly stained in others. “Good, we need it. But that just means I’ll starve this weekend.”

“Better eat hearty tonight, then. Employee discount, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right!” Grace brightened up. “Two Old Fashioneds, then, and two plates of fish and chips.”

“Comin’ right up,” Aaron said as he turned to grab bottles off the shelves. Rosa turned to Grace.

“So, spill. Who was that guy on the street?”

“It probably wasn’t even him,” Grace deflected.

“Well, who did you think he was?”

Grace let out a long sigh. “That guy just… looked a lot like my high school ex. That’s all.”

“Oh, so what’s the story there? Messy breakup? Lots of drama?” Rosa rested her chin on her hands, eager for the story.

“Ugh, no, not at all. He was two years older than me, so we broke up when he went to college. He went to NYU, so we decided long-distance wasn’t really an option. It sucked a lot because we were together for almost a year and a half, but there’s no bad blood between us or anything. It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, so I was just surprised. But that probably wasn’t even him. A lot of guys these days like the glasses and blazers-with-jeans look.”

“Hmm,” Rosa hummed, a little disappointed. “Wouldn’t that be weird if it was him, though?”

“Yeah, really though,” Grace laughed. “Honestly, I’m not really sure what he’s up to nowadays. We don’t really talk, and he’s not too active on social media. Whoever that man was, he just gave me a serious blast from the past.”

Aaron set their drinks down, and they both smiled gratefully before picking up their glasses and clinking them together.

“To the new director,” Rosa suggested.

“To the new director!” Grace responded. “Whoever they are, they’ll have a hell of a job.”

#ajay x mc #fanfic #hssca fanfic #Bullshit #that's just my tag for this now #ella i owe u my life #update: it has a title now #tag is now how bout a dance #how bout a dance #it's a SONG #from the MUSICAL #and i still owe ella my life #my fanfic #hbad

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13alecampillo-blog · 4 years

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Introducing Myself

Who am I?

My name is Alejandra Campillo, I’m eighteen years old and currently spending a gap year abroad in Germany through the Congress-Bundestag Vocational Youth Exchange Program. I’ll also be a freshman at Stanford University the fall of 2020. In this blog you’ll be able to find a plethora of content revolving around political, economic, and social issues, as well as the occasional philosophical pondering and fashion commentary- in addition to of course insight on my time in Germany and experience with applying to Stanford (and a disgusting additional 16+ universities).

A lot of what influences me and the way I think are the different places I’ve lived in the past eighteen years. Born in California, I moved to El Paso, Texas when I was five years old and lived there until I was thirteen. After that, my father took on an expat assignment in coincidentally the Mexican city where both my parents were from- Hermosillo, Sonora. Living there for three years was revolutionary for my identity in many, many ways. After Mexico, my family and I spent two years in the Chicago, Illinois suburbs, Aurora/Naperville area. It was while attending my local high school that I applied to Stanford and my gap year program. I graduated May 2019 and departed for Germany late June. After two months in Bonn, I’ve moved to Wülfrath- where I’ll be spending the next ten months.

This blog is a documentation of my take on it.

Why do this?

In true gap year spirit, my biggest goal this year is to dedicate my time to advancing myself- regardless of how cliché as it sounds. My entire time in high school was either dedicated to adapting to a new school, new culture, aiming for the highest GPA, or going worldly lengths to be admitted into Stanford. I learned the math, the writing, the history, the science, and whatever else was asked of me. But in the process of that, I distanced myself further from- well, myself. School was no longer a tool for aiding my passion of expanding my every curiosity and interest but instead a weapon I used to battle against a society, a university, and a vicious voice inside my head in an effort to prove I was worthy.

This isn’t necessarily a year to take a break, it’s a year to exercise my brain in other ways. To me, this gap year signifies restoring balance. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret grinding my days away for school and am excited to grind at Stanford. I want to challenge myself academically even further than ever before.

But the fuel has to be different. My last breaths of senior year were powered by a feeling that I was way too deep in any of my commitments to quit, regardless of how much of a toll it was taking on me- it was powered by an internal shame and fear of seeming weak in comparison to my academic peers- I was powered by enough cups of coffee to make my stomach twist and ache as my burnt-out brain laboriously churned information for the satisfaction of an A.

I started this blog as a symbol for returning to doing things because I have a passion for doing them, not for a grade or deadline. Additionally, I hope that by sharing my own experiences I can help others who are on the college application journey- or really any journey challenged by obstacles.

What to expect?

I promise all of my writing to be raw; it’ll be real. Not necessarily perfect (in terms of grammar and organization) but hopefully good enough to get the message across (lol). It’ll be opinionated, it’ll probably be bold – but ultimately, it’ll be true, at least my truth.

I hope that my writing is useful for anyone that needs it, maybe it can help some people feel slightly less alone.

I welcome you all to this gap year journey (that sounds really cliché oops).

Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, or anything in-between!

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incorrectsanders · 6 years

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What Pride Month Means to Me

I’m going to diverge from incorrect quotes for a post to share this experience with all of you since it’s pride month and that’s really important to me.

I have always been vocal about LGBTQ+ rights. I remember once in kindergarten my teacher told two boys they couldn’t hold hands and be boyfriends. We were at that age that giving kisses on the cheeks and calling each other boyfriends and girlfriends was becoming common practice. The problem was that I lived in BFN Texas with small minded people who couldn’t let children develop such *dangerous* habits. My response to her statement? I threw a mega blok at her head and screamed “THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT”.

Why was my reaction so strong? Well, on record I lived with my mom, her roommate and her roommate’s son. Really, I lived with my two moms and my older brother.

Personally, I’m straight. I’ve never faced first hand discrimination for my sexuality. But, when I had two moms (they’re separated now) I watched the discrimination they faced on a daily basis. They couldn’t get married, instead they had to have a “commitment ceremony”. We got turned away from almost every house we tried to buy because no one wanted to sell or rent to gay women. They had to hide their relationship from their bosses, from their extended families. My mothers family cut her off because she came out.

I was born in California. We moved to Texas when I was three and my brother was eight. We moved back to California when I was six and he was eleven. The discrimination didn’t change much between the two areas. In fact, it might have just been because I was older and more perceptive but some things got worse.

It took us years to find a house. We finally settled on an apartment because the property manager was the sweetest woman ever and we’re still friends with her today, thirteen years later. Her children are like my babies because I’ve known them all their lives. The community was really close knit, we all knew each other and all of the kids were best friends. We used to play red rover in the park together and we’d tie together our jump ropes to make swings out of the monkey bars.

I loved that apartment complex. No one cared that me and my brother had two moms. No one pointed out that my brother was full Mexican and therefore had darker skin than me, a half Mexican. All of the kids were friends with each other. (“You guys have two moms?” “Yeah.” “Cool! I wish I had two moms, my dad snores too loud”) We were just allowed to exist.

When I was eight we managed to find a teacher who owned a house and allowed us to rent from her. She was the sweetest person ever and she loved me and my older brother to the point where she put in requests for both of us to be in her combination class when we were in 5th and 6th grade (She didn’t get us because we were in an arts program in the school that had special, designated teachers for us. Even if we had been “regular” students though, she would have had to fight with another teacher who adored us and had provided shelter for the two of us for a solid six years when kids were being mean).

The neighborhood wasn’t nearly as welcoming. There were only three families on our entire street that accepted us completely and didn’t refer to our home as “the gay house”. The rest of them pulled their kids in when me and my brother wanted to play, they glared at us if we were out in the front yard doing something as a family, and they even called the police a few times when we were having parties because we were ‘too disturbing’. (Literally all we were doing was playing Payaso de Rodeo. “Gay and Mexican? In my Good Christian Suburbs?”)

When Prop 8 was being voted on (California’s legislation on gay marriage, circa 2008, that is ridiculous please watch this AD if you have a minute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgjcgqFYP4), a man that lived in the house on the end of our street smirked at me and my brother, who were peacefully riding our bikes, as he sunk a big ‘ol “Yes on 8″ sign into his lawn. Ten year old me and my fifteen year old brother snuck out of the house at eleven o’clock at night, ran down the street, and stole the sign. I said our family faced discrimination, I never said we didn’t fight back.

As for school, my brother and I were constantly referred to as the two kids with the “lesbo moms”. That is an actual expression I heard from kids my age many, many times. People constantly asked me if I was gay (“No” “But you have two moms...” “And?” “So you have to be gay!” “Says who?” “Your brother is gay!” “Okay, if your brother was gay would that make you gay?” “No!” “Well then *jazz hands sarcastically*”) I didn’t have many friends because children didn’t feel comfortable around me since they knew I had two moms. Many of the friends I did manage to make weren’t allowed to be friends with me once their parents found out that I had two moms. Kids used to laugh at me because I would ask my teachers if I could make two mothers day crafts. (I eventually cried about this to my step mother. Me and her did not get along and even now I don’t like her very much but there are a few precious moments I look back on. One of them is her hugging me, stroking my hair and telling me mothers day could be my mom’s day and fathers day could be her day)

I didn’t meet my Dad until I was nine. Two weeks after I did meet him, he dragged me to church with him and had his priest talk to me. I distinctly remember sitting in his office and playing with my little coin purse that my step mom brought me back from Guadalajara (another one of the precious moments) while the priest told me that I needed to ostracize my mom and move in with my Dad who I barely knew. If I did that and had my First Communion then I could hope that my soul would be saved.

I was nine.

(Another one of those precious moments was when I came home that day crying and my step mom wrapped me in a blanket and she told my mom that my Dad was not on my birth certificate and if I didn’t want to go back then I didn’t have to)

That tainted religion for a long time for me. It wasn’t until freshman year when I started meeting people who were vocal about both religion and social rights that I started to believe that all religious people aren’t bad.

Pride parades were always a break from the harsh reactions of others. Every year my mom and step mom would take me and my older brother and they would throw beads and candy and flags and all sorts of things at us off the floats (Condoms too, sometimes. Cue the awkward conversation between me and my brother “Bubba, what’s this?” “A BALLOON *grabs it and chucks it away*” “Nooo, I want the balloon!!”) People would get excited when they saw us as a family. I had a rainbow glass pendant that a vendor gave me because she thought I was adorable with my little rainbow flag and rainbow crocs. June makes me happy because it reminds me of all of those wonderful people who were so accepting and just wanted to have a loving space for a while.

LGBTQ+ Rights are important to me even though I’m not a part of the community. I speak up. If I hear someone being put down for any reason I speak up. All through middle school and high school I had amazing groups of friends who were largely LGBTQ+ or POC or just “outcasts” that banded together and protected each other.

I watched discrimination for years. I saw the effect that it had on my moms and as the “kids with the two moms” my brother and I felt the discrimination second hand.

Despite the distressing times and the othering my family often faced when we were still whole, I could have never asked for a better way to grow up. It made me more accepting and loving. (In 7th grade, a friend of mine came out to the school as transgender. None of us really knew what that meant. Others were rude. I simply walked up to him and asked “What does that mean?” “It means I’m a boy inside.” “Oh! Okay, do you want me to start calling you ‘he’?” “Yes, please!” “And should we still call you Dani?” “Yeah, but can you spell it with a y now?” “Okay!”)

Content like what Thomas and his friends produce makes me extremely happy. They’re not afraid to be themselves and that is lovely. No one should be afraid to be themselves.

Pride month means a lot to me, even though I myself am not part of the LGBTQ+ community. I hope everyone has a lovely one. If you read through this all, thank you. Now, back to the content you followed for!

Happy Pride, everyone.

#not incorrect quotes #pride #pride month #happy pride #thomas sanders #sanders sides

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ortegcs-blog · 6 years

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hey hey, kiddos ! this is your mother, admin luna, speaking. i hope everyone is getting settled in nicely and whatnot. umm, personal stuff ? i’m 24, i’m from argentina, i study translation and teaching, i currently work as an esl teacher and ?? that’s it. i love angst and pain so bring me your worst tbh. here’s all the dirt on this son of mine if you guys are interested -- hmu for plots & i’ll be doing the same once i read through everyone’s intros !!! welcome to the rp !!!

( peter gadiot + cismale + he/him ) — there’s a rumor running around about a survivor called diego ortega. they are said to be thirty one years old, from el paso, texas, and have been labeled the sicario. fitting, considering that they are reported to be diligent + intuitive, as well as cynical + rapacious. they reside in civic center station and are a sniper. apparently they are a demisexual virgo. shots of tequila + death from above.

born to immigrant parents, diego’s birthplace was american soil though conception certainly happened in the warmth of mexican soil. his parents, like many others, were escaping a debt with a cartel. they thought el paso, texas, would be a decent place to start over.

family was everything to the ortegas, and that was a trait that was handed down from generation to generation. diego was not the exception. when it came to his baby sister, the greedy boy didn’t seem to mind sharing his toys ( though perhaps he’d tug on her ponytails later, just for the sake of marking territory ).

he was six when he realized his family lived a quiet life. no friends were invited over nor did his parents ever overshare with nosy neighbors. the ortegas might as well have been ghosts within their neighborhood.

he was eight when he realized why they were so quiet. crossing the border bought the ortegas debt time, but living on borrowed time is temporary and one could only hope for so much. diego hopped off the school bus and walked the three blocks home only to find his mother hunched over, scrubbing blood off the tacky carpet and smelling of bleach.

the police investigated his father’s murder for a short while: enough to make it seem like they were doing their job, not enough to do it right. he held his mother’s trembling hand as they lowered his father’s body six feet into the ground. debt settled. blood for blood.

his mother kept a careful gaze on her children after that -- or rather, far more careful. a hawk protecting baby birds. only baby birds outgrow their nest and when they are met with questions that hawks refuse to answer, they tend to fly away. and fly he did, into the open arms of petty crime and, eventually, the cartel life, where answers came in abundance if one could pay the price.

it broke his mother’s heart, surely, to see her son mimic her late husband’s steps. but teenage diego needed answers, needed reasons, needed someone to blame. he wouldn’t find that hidden behind his mother.

adulthood came in a life of crime but the true distance with his family came when his sister became a cerdo -- a pig, A COP. having his baby sister join the ranks of law enforcement did little to help his reputation and, eventually, putting distance between each other became the most logical course of action.

this, however, did not keep the siblings from crossing paths. they did so a number of times, always on opposite sides, always buried in conflict. never harming each other, though. never trying to. this didn’t go unnoticed and they were pitted against each other. a fight to the death.

diego wouldn’t hurt her. not really. he fired the gun but made sure to miss. a distraction. a little chaos. a lot of chaos was what he got when the outbreak saved both their asses. in the midst of it all, between a war of cats and dogs, the undead felt like the more frightening of the enemies. the ortegas never had a choice. they stuck to each other. family comes first.

they ran together northwest, into california, into san francisco, and ended up joining the civic center station camp for motives of convenience. his loyalty is only placed on his sister, the only person he truly trusts. family is everything.

#intro.hell #murder tw #blood tw #death tw #also warning this is long af #and shitty but tbh i'm tired sue me #── ✧･ﾟ: he asked for the blood and the rust and the sin ⧼ additional ⧽#── ✧･ﾟ: excuse me; which level of hell is this ? ⧼ ooc ⧽

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veronica2853 · 5 years

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Sponsors of Literacy

Veronica Beaulieu

In a world in which literacy is so important, you’d think that everyone should have the same opportunities and sponsors so that anybody could have the chance to be successful. Sadly, that is not the case. All over the world, people struggle everyday to get the education that others automatically receive. Main factors that often take place in struggles of people include race, family, social classes along with the location in which you have grown up. In Deborah Brandt’s reading, Sponsors of Literacy, she wrote about how these factors limit opportunities and also wrote about people with different literacy experiences.

Brandt compared two people who are the same age and lived in the same area, Raymond Branch and Dora Lopez. Branch came from a wealthier family and had access to technology for most of his life along with other sponsors of literacy. On the other hand, Lopez didn’t get access to a computer until she was thirteen years old and had to search hard for other sponsors to successfully improve her literacy. This study supports that race can have a big impact on the education you receive since Branch came from a European American family that had been born in California and Lopez came from a Mexican American family that lived in a Texas border town. This study also supports that family is a big factor too. Branch’s mother was a real estate executive and his father was a professor which led him to the exposure of computer programming and other sponsors in his father’s science lab. On the other hand, Lopez’s family worked as farm laborers which made it harder for her to get the same exposure. Both Branch and Lopez had moved to the same area and were the same age but had grown up with different experiences.

Earlier, I stated that social classes and locations in which people grow up in can impact their literacy. A case in which this statement is supported is Malcolm X. He was orphaned as a child and lived in a variety of foster homes which led him towards criminal activities. Malcolm grew up selling drugs and running the streets, leaving him with no time or interest for getting the right education, especially after a teacher in eighth grade told him his race would not allow him to become a lawyer which caused him to drop out. These experiences and factors prevented Malcolm from learning and also made it a struggle for him to read, write and even speak correctly until he was exposed to the correct literacy sponsors for him which turned out to be books from the library and college faculty in jail along with letters, inmates and even the motivation he learned to get out of the discouraging comment his past teacher made.

These people’s situations can show how these factors affect other’s learning experiences but so can mine. I come from a family whose first language is Spanish. This made it hard for me when I was younger because I was not exposed to as many sponsors at home as I am now that I am older. Often, it was very difficult to receive the help I needed at home because they did not know how to help me with homework or school projects. Over a long period of many years, they have now improved their literacy but it was extremely difficult for them because they started from zero and they did not learn at an early age as most people do. They did not have previously successful family in the world of literacy. Although we lived a few steps away from my neighbors, and went to the same places in my small hometown, there were many things that prevented my family from having the education they had and all the support they had received making it a struggle but not impossible.

I know that people have argued that one’s only struggle is themself and their motivation to learn, which is not wrong. All of these people I just wrote about did end up learning because of their motivation, even if it was at a late age. Their education was majorly impacted by their race, family, social classes and the location in which they were living at though which has caused struggles for them. These struggles delay one’s amount of opportunities, income and other things that are important in life. I hope that one day, it becomes easier and more accessible for anyone to receive the same education regardless any of those factors, just as those people who already have success in their life from their parents and other family members. This would give others a higher chance to be successful as well.

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zp1999blog-blog · 5 years

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Dora Vs Raymond Who Really Had It Better?

In ‘Sponsors of Literacy’ Deborah Brandt talks about the impact that literacy sponsorships play in the lives of different people from different cultures, families and backgrounds. Brandt talks about a story of two kids both named Raymond and Dora who were both born in 1969. The two of them had very different family backgrounds and grew up in different parts of the country. Raymond Branch is a European American born in Southern California who had a father who was a professor and a mother who was a real estate executive. In first grade Branch had access to a computer that was hooked up to a mainframe computer at Stanford University as a young kid he would mess around with computer programming in his Dad’s science lab. Raymond also received his first personal mainframe computer for Christmas at the age of twelve years old. Raymond lived near lots of new computer hardware and software stores that were opening up in the 1980s and spent his time during the summers trying new games on the computer and was able to get in contact with a lot of founders and gained a lot of experience for his career in the future as a successful freelance writer of software and software documentation.

Dora is a Mexican American who was born in a Texas Border town and as a baby her and her family moved to the town Raymond Branch and his family lived in. Dora had a very different childhood compared to Raymond. Dora’s father worked as a shipping and receiving clerk while studying and working towards an accounting degree at a local technical college and her mother worked part time in a bookstore. Dora and her family often had to drive over 70 miles to a large city to get suitable groceries and for newspapers and magazines that were in spanish. Dora with the help of friends and family taught herself how to read and write in Spanish when she was very young. She also didn’t work with a computer until she was 13 when she worked as a teacher's aide at a summer school program. Dora attended the same University as Raymond and then transferred to a technical college and attended school while working for a cleaning company and translating for her supervisor because of their large Latina cleaning staff. Despite the major differences between the two of them both Raymond and Dora became successful in their fields. Brandt argues that Raymond had more of an advantage and had a better path for success. For example in her writing she says “A statistical correlation between high literacy achievement and high socioeconomic, majority-race status routinely shows up in results of national tests of reading and writing performance”. Brandt is saying people with a higher status and economic background have a better literacy skills. My argument is that although Raymond did have an easier path to success Dora learned a lot more from her experiences as a kid and learned character traits Raymond never had.

Dora grew up having to be self dependent and rely on herself oppose to Raymond who grew up relying on his family’s resources. At a very young age Dora learned about work ethic watching her mother and father both work part time jobs while attending school to get their degrees. She learned how to do things on her own and be self dependent when she taught herself how to read and write in Spanish as an adolescent with the help of her friends and family too. Dora gained intangibles that will last her a life time and will benefit her for years to come. An example of another person who learned some defining character traits from conditions that were not ideal is Malcolm X. As a kid Malcolm X did not get much support from his peers, he was told by his teacher he would never be a lawyer. In the ‘Framing the Reading’ section about Malcolm X’s autobiography it it talks about his motivation he had for learning that was caused by his doubters “When he had a reason to read, he read, and reading fed his motivation to read further.” Malcolm X learned from his experiences that even if no one believes in you all you need to be successful is to believe in yourself. Just like Dora learned intangibles like independence and work ethic that will take her farther and make her more successful in the long run.

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jdmainman123 · 2 years

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I don't know this these places look a lot like where Tampa used to be in the backyard I'm really conflicted we want to call it and say we're in Las vegas.

But again same we're from California beaches a lot better I could see this s*** being like Hollywood distance from the beach.

I don't know I need ideas guys

THEY'RE IDENTICAL TO TENNESSEE SO I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU REMEMBER I QUIT IN TENNESSEE

No no you guys got to stay one thing if you let the the candy cross my eyes I'm going to look at it. You know Los Angeles 3/4 little girls couldn't even keep me up turns out one of them called out one of the boys. There he is and she pointed at him I want you to kill him and marry me.

Oh you kiss my ass

The problem with Las Vegas is they don't have any power between them and California not $1 in between the both of them. SHE'S WALKING AROUND DOESN'T KNOW SHE'S FATHERLESS

Since the language is f***** up guys can we go back to say keeping the word father out of this. Yeah that's right so we can get back to dead daughter call on a satellite. And answers all the satellite signals. No we want dead family to be honest with you it's my only negotiating tool I'm not going to continue to insult this girl. Because the white one is definitely a winner and the black one is definitely a winner. But the black skin one right she's the one that one but everybody's allowed to hate just checking

When you guys are calling dad daughter to a white skin girl we always question why you guys were calling a black skin girl dead daughter and I said okay I understand she won the game she killed she got away with it but then she quit showering

But you called this white hair girl a dead daughter seems to be beyond hate and beyond jealousy. And we will just like to call her a dead family she can deal with a dead family she said fine I don't want to see you anymore. And if she got up walked out came back in stood in front of me and then walked out again.

So if you guys are sticking eye candy in front of me I'm going to stare at it. It's better than what did you guys want me to fall so apart and I wouldn't look up at any of the girls? No remember I was in China and they had an outbreak of all those white hair girls. And what happened was the Chinese girl not the Mexican the other white skin black hair girl. Stepped in and took control. And there was not one attack on me in like 30 days I was living in heaven. As a matter of fact I was knocked unconscious woke up hungry and confused and I just remembered usually when I get scared like if they don't make me bleed I start repeating something that that they love. And your computer is great your Chinese computer is the best computer I've ever seen. And I went on about all the computers in Boston nearly as smart the computers in Texas aren't even close to being as smart as yours.

And then I look up sleeping in the dark and see a bright light and I say I see the Chinese King and the Chinese queen there reaching for my hand and then I reach for their hand and a box of noodles ramen noodles with teriyaki sauce and then a voice ask from the light do you want some chicken. And I can't see a face. And I say yes your computers are the best computers in the world. And all the sudden in my other hand is a bag of chicken.

Yeah if we were behind China no this isn't your story if we were following China on the beach let's say we're in Los Angeles beach. And we were under the regime of the Chinese and not the mexicans. We all wouldn't be here in 3/4 building another 3/4 to claim it's because of socialism. Call me stupid but don't call me dumb

No she's walking around and doesn't know she's fatherless

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cbcdiversity · 6 years

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Author Interview with June Jo Lee & Man One

“Remix” is integral in Chef Roy Choi’s work as he uses food to remix culture and communities. What does remix mean to you and does it apply to your daily work?

JJL: As a food ethnographer, I think about “remix” all the time! Remix is now the culinary code for good and interesting food, not just in America but in the world. Remix represents a growing circle of empathy in which traditional walls between “us v. them” are cracking up and breaking down. We naturally express our remix identities and experiences by cooking and sharing foods we know and can imagine. As an immigrant, I am a “remix” of Seoul, Pusan, “Korea,” Texas, California, and “America.” As a student of cultural anthropology, remix represents the concept of bricoleur which (I immediately fell in love with) means someone who takes whatever is on hand to mix-and-match and create their own identity, meaning and truths. This is me. When Chef Roy Choi put Korean BBQ in a tortilla with Awesome sauce on a food truck and announced it on Twitter to the world, he was speaking to me.

M1: As an old school hip-hop head, REMIX to me means the fresh mixing of music or visual flavor and by flavor I mean style! I have created many murals and pieces of art where I have taken something cultural or iconic from my Mexican culture and “remixed” it to make it relevant to a new generation. It’s a lot of fun to do but also a great way to pass on legacy to future generations of young people.

June Jo Lee is an immigrant from South Korea and Man One is a child of immigrants (from Mexico.) How does your family immigrant experience influence your work?

JJL: An immigrant’s experience for me was source of my deepest suffering and greatest gift. I was awfully teased for my stinky food, my slanted eyes and my flat face in elementary school in Palo Alto, California. And, when I returned back to Seoul, South Korea as a third-grader, I was teased for my American accent, weird behaviors and not being a perfect Korean girl. I felt as though I didn’t fit in any which way, and so I escaped into books and the forest behind my house. I was very lonely and all alone. As I grew older, this “not fitting in” gave me the skills of adaptability, fluidity and empathy. I learned to see, hear and feel more deeply as a survival tool. And, I discovered cultural anthropology as a way of understanding me and my context in relation to others and their context. Anthropology led me to my profession as a researcher of food culture and a writer of food culture for kids. The books I write — I’m working on my next children’s book with Jacquline Briggs Martin — are based on deep ethnography of our foodways and diversity of ways of being in this world that I first experienced as an immigrant.

M1: Being a first generation US citizen, I have a great sense of American pride as well as cultural pride with my Mexican roots. Although I was born here, my first language was Spanish. I grew up watching Mexican TV shows and sports, like Lucha Libre (Mexican wrestling), these things were very influential and I draw inspiration from them all the time. I also grew up watching American TV and movies which were also very influential to me. Coming from an immigrant family I feel 100% connected to two different cultures at the same time. It’s a very unique experience and I love celebrating it in my art!

How does food play a role in your family traditions?

JJL: I love cooking for my family. After a long day of researching, writing and emailing, I cook…with a glass of White Burgundy…and seasonal vegetables and some good meats. I cook from memory of all the dishes I have eaten and imagination of new possibilities of remixing flavors, textures and experiences. Sometimes I listen to an audiobook (right now I’m listening to The Sun is Also a Star). And I enjoy being in my senses, my heart, my thoughts, my feelings. I have cooked dinner for my family ever since my kids were born, so we all share this time in the evening, all back at home, sitting around the table, sharing food I have made. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes my husband cooks. Now that my kids are in college, we still share this time when we are together. Sitting down and eating family dinner together is expected, the norm in our family tradition.

M1: "Food equals family,” it’s that simple. Most of my fondest memories of my grandparents were sitting around the kitchen table and helping in preparing large meals for the holidays. The smell of beans cooking or chili’s being roasted on the stove top are forever engrained in my head. Mexican hot chocolate (champurrado) and tamales were reserved for Christmas time. Capirotada (Mexican bread pudding) and torrejas de camaron (shrimp patties) were only served on Fridays during the Lent season. I can go on for days about the food and our traditions!

As a Korean American author and Mexican American artist, what reaction do you get from children when you share your personal experience? What are the biggest surprises?

JJL: Kids today either have already tried kimchi (my “stinky food”) and love it, or they pinch their noses after I open a jar during my author visits. But, by the end of my book reading, they are all gathering around that funky jar, smelling and looking at the bubbles from the lacto-fermentation. My favorite quote is from a kindergartner in LA who asked, “why did you open that? It hurts me,” as I opened the jar. Afterwards she rushed up to have a closer look (and smell?). Another kindergartner boy who was Korean American asked me, “can you tie my shoe?” as his way to connect with me. All the kids that day then got to eat lunch from Chef Roy’s Kogi Food Truck. That was a perfect day!

M1: Kids love the book! They identify with the story so much and they love the graffiti style I brought to it, which makes me really proud. I knew many kids would really love it in LA, but I had no idea how deeply it would resonate with kids in so many other cities around the country! One of the biggest surprises is that many readers that I’ve met at book signings often think I’m the illustrator AND the chef! It must be the goatee I guess.

CHEF ROY CHOI marks the picture book debut for both of you (The book was co-written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin as part of her “Food Heroes” series.) What have you discovered working with teachers, librarians, and children?

JJL: I love teachers, librarians and children. They are the most open, curious, generous and weird cohorts I have ever worked with. (As a former Austinite, “weird” is a good thing in my book). In my day job as a food ethnographer, I usually work with corporate types in casual Thursday attire. I like them too. But I love teachers, librarians and children because they are our future.

M1: This book has opened up a whole new dimension to my career and put me in front of so many great people that I would’ve never met had it not been for this book. I’ve always enjoyed working with kids but I have a new found admiration for teachers and librarians. The work that these people do is so amazing and to know that my artwork is helping them facilitate the education of our next generation is just beyond words. I hope to create more books and stories that speak to all our kids, it’s such an amazing feeling to connect in this way.

Did you know? Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix has received the following Awards & Honors: • Sibert Award Honor for Most Distinguished Informational Book 2018 • Notable Children’s Book 2018, American Library Association • Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People 2018, NCSS • Orbis Pictus Award Honor Book for Outstanding Nonfiction 2018, NCTE • “Outstanding Merit,” 2018 Best Children's Book of the Year, Bank Street College of Education • Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List 2018-2019 • Rhode Island Children’s Book Award Finalist 2019 • Vermont Red Clover Award Finalist 2019 • Finalist, INDIES Book of the Year 2017, Foreword Reviews • Junior Library Guild Selection

June Jo Lee is a good ethnographer, studying how America eats. She’s a national speaker on food trends and consults with organizations, from college campus dining to Google Food. She is also co-founder of publisher READERS to EATERS, with a mission to promote food literacy. Like Roy Choi, she was born in Seoul, South Korea, and moved to the United States where she grew up eating her mom’s kimchi. She now lives in San Francisco. Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix is her first book. More about her at foodethnographer.com.

Man One has been a pioneer in the graffiti art movement in Los Angeles since the 1980s. His artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including Parco Museum in Japan and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He has painted live onstage at music concerts and festivals. He is also co-founder of Crewest Studio, a creative communications company focusing on contemporary global culture. A lifelong Los Angeleno, he loved eating his family’s delicious Mexican recipes growing up. Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix is his first children’s book. More about Man One at manone.com.

#READERS to EATERS #Chef Roy Choi #Picture Book #Nonfiction #Author Q & A #Author Q and A #cbcdiversity #diverse childrens books #diverse kidlit #own voices #remix #June Jo Lee #Man One #Jacqueline Briggs Martin

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