Artistikem

I Am A Director teaser trailer. I love it a bit more every time I see it.

Please help back this project on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/HZlGlC

Driving around San Juan.

New Year’s Eve in Puerto Rico / Despedida de Año en Puerto Rico

Completely unnecessary and terribly sad. :(

We don’t need no stinking Mayans to tell us this is about to end, we are ending it ourselves. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

So, as it is of common knowledge to my followers on Twitter, I’m yet again unemployed (been on and off my job for the last four years, long story).

Last Friday I was sitting patiently on a not-so-comfortable seat at the unemployment office trying to keep my cool because I had already done the mandatory telephone call and was supposed to just pick a form there and not get interviewed like I did and blah, blah.

To the point. Turns were given electronically, printed on a piece of thermal paper in letters not too small for us young ones but a bit hard to read for the not-so-young. Also, they weren’t calling the numbers out loud, they just appeared on a TV screen propped on the roof and showing a movie all the while.

There was this man, elderly and with a cane. He couldn’t walk too fast -or almost not at all for this matter- and when his number was called, he didn’t know. The security guy was reading the numbers of those who didn’t answer right away just in case the person hadn’t noticed, thanks to that the man knew he was up. Thing was, he was standing at a corner across from where he was going to be attended and even when the security guy told the teller to wait up, she didn’t. They passed to the next turn and when the man made it to where she was, she told him he had to cross the whole place again, get another number and wait.

That was when everyone went “Oh no you didn’t!”

And when I went “Oh yes, there’s still faith in humanity.”

Some women rounded up and asked the teller to be nice and give him what he needed (it was just a letter), but she wouldn’t yield. They kept advocating for him until some a supervisor came from inside her cave and gave the man the letter he needed.

I was so thankful to be there and see what happened, even when later I was told I didn’t appear in their system and couldn’t be given the document I needed after waiting for more than two hours for it, I came out of there thinking that maybe, just maybe, not all is lost.

wine-loving-vagabond:

Today at UPR Rio Piedras:

This is the massive, oppressive and unnecessary presence of the Police inside the University of Puerto Rico. Today was a most sad day for this whole island and civil rights. The students were PAINTING murals and slogans in the street in front of the main library, in protests against the administration of the university and the rise of tuition. After a heated discussion between the students and the police, who were video-taping them, the latter resorted to exaggerated violence.  Students were beaten with rods and fists. Over 20 students were arrested. 

(via thispuertoricanlife)

I may not be saying much about this topic lately, but that doesn’t mean that I’ve disconnected myself from it. I am there every day, watching, witnessing what’s been happening. This conflict has brought up emotions I didn’t even know I could feel, from the joy of listening to students exercising their right to protest against injustice with eloquence and, furthermost, ideas and proposals that can solve the problem, to the anger of walking down a corridor and passing by a trio of police officers with batons strapped to their waists that go from their hips to their ankles.

Above all, it’s been stressful. The police presence inside campus brings security to no one. Their presence is not welcomed and undesired. Those who don’t know the history of the University of Puerto Rico must think the opposite, that the police should stay there for everyone’s ‘safety’. But those of us who have done the research know that Puerto Rican police have been the cause of disgrace and bloodshed inside campus. And I’m not talking only about Antonia.

However, what I want to point here is a clear example of how the police presence will never ensure safety. Yesterday, January 11, 2011 we celebrated the birth date of one of the greatest educators in Latin America: Eugenio María de Hostos. A gathering took place inside Río Piedras campus, after which the students marched through the streets and buildings. It was around 12:50pm and I was coming out of having lunch at ‘El Centro’ with my husband and two coworkers when we saw them marching:

I kept walking to my faculty and saw this line up closely following them:

Then went to my office to watch the news and see what was going on. This is what happened:

Smoke bombs + shattered glass + property destroyed = 0 arrests (Amazing!)

Today, January 12, 2011, a group of students were handing out flyers with info about the strike and, after asking permission from professors, were talking to their fellow students about their reasons for the strike and what has been happening. There were professors accompanying them, as always, they are there to watch over them all the time. And, guess what happened?

10 students were arrested.

They didn’t destroy anything, didn’t act violently, they even asked permission to speak in the classrooms they did and ended up arrested. There were no charges, of course, what harm could they do to others? Paper cuts?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m against destroying property and acting so recklessly. All I am stating is that if the police were in campus to ‘serve and protect’ those with the masks and the sticks breaking glasses would’ve spent the day in the precinct instead of the ones that were handing out flyers. Like a professor told me today: ‘even and imbecile would understand what is going on here.’

Photo sources: ENDI and PrimeraHora

kadly:

via greenblood:

I want to express my solidarity with the strike that started today.
My university is falling apart and it seems that the government
is failing the citizens by making things worse.
Education should be a priority to a struggling economy.
This is not a commodity, and the investigations and research
laboratories in this university system have given Puerto Rico
honors and recognitions.

They wish to take it all away.
They wish to leave our halls barren.
Our books closed.

The fight for the university isn’t just over the petty things.
Not even the 800$ addition to our tuition fees is enough of a reason for protesting.
Not even that they removed the gates from our campuses in order to make us more into some hybrid american institution.
Not even the blatant violation of civil rights that is being carried out at the moment.
(Armed police inside all the campuses?)
No….the reason is far beyond things, it lies in the ideas.
What do they really want from us?
They want pure obedience, machines that lie on the floor dormant as they are being crushed.

I can’t even begin to say.
So I won’t say a thing.

This photo resumes most of what has happened today at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus. On the 7th day of strike a clash between police and students has left 21 arrested (3 of them didn’t make it to the police precinct with the others, they were taken on a ride inside a police van while angry cops hit them repeatedly) and many wounded. Right now, at 10:20pm our time, lawyers are trying to get to the students while parents have to stay outside, along with protesters on Eleanor Roosevelt Avenue, waiting for information.

This saddens me to the core. Enough said.

Photo by Carlos Giusti [Endi.com] More here

On the 10th day of Christmas the UPR gave to me… a campus full of cops and a bag of shattered dreams.

This morning when my husband dropped me near my faculty for work he pointed a severe finger at me and said “I don’t want you walking around campus, there are police officers everywhere.”

That about resumes our feelings about this tragedy. Yes, this is a tragedy, that after 30 years of enforcing our Non-Confrontation Policy state police have taken over our campuses and converted them into police states. 30 years during which there have been conflicts, stoppages and strikes, but they have all been resolved and life, studies and work have went on without the blood and deaths this university had to live through in the 70s and 80s.

For months now everywhere you go inside this campus there is one of those private guards overlooking, now there are joined by state police in their blue uniforms surveying the place from their patrol cars, motorcycles and ATVs. They see you walking down the sidewalk and come almost to a stop to watch you as if you were a criminal. That is the picture of an unsafe environment, that is a recipe for disaster, that is clear intimidation and dictatorship.

That is our worst nightmare coming true.

It saddens me, as it saddens my coworkers and everyone that loves and cherishes this university.