Category: media

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Immigration Rally in San Diego

Sunday afternoon, tens of thousands marched through downtown San Diego. The news wires report over 50,000 attended, while others estimate the count at over 80,000. I was at the march to gather sound for NPR’s Morning Edition, KQED’s California Report, and KPBS News. On site, people were saying 15,000. I have no idea how they estimate these things, and I’ve never been in a crowd that large, so I can’t really say how may people were there. Here are photos I took:

Immigration Rally in San Diego

The march was completely peaceful. The organizers handed out free bottled water. The police presence was very low. Most people wore white to symbolize peace and unity. People shouted “Si se puede,” “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,” and other chants. I spoke to a journalist who writes for the media in Mexico City, an actor from the film A Day Without A Mexican, local residents, and several undocumented immigrants. I met a husband and wife who held a sign that read, “My wife is not a criminal.” The man served in Iraq and the woman was undocumented. She was brought to the U.S. at an early age and spoke perfect, unaccented English. She said she considers herself an American.

Immigration Rally in San Diego

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culture crit news photo web

NowPublic.com adds my photo to a story

NowPublic

I got an email from Calder Lorenz, Director of Contributor Relations at NowPublic.com asking me for permission to attach this photo (from Flickr) to a story about Mexico extraditing drug lords to the U.S. I’m glad he at least asked and let me know he wanted to use (or share) it.

The image is (sort of) protected by a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – ShareAlike License. I’m a believer in sharing ideas. At this point in time, I am not overly concerned with making money on my creative work. That Creative Commons license is basically an “open source” license for media. If someone decides to use my photo/video to make money, they’ll have to negotiate with me before being legally free to use it. If it serves a non-profit or educational purpose, feel free use it or twist it into something new. Just let me know about it. If my work becomes so massively distributed and culturally important that I could actually make money on it, I suppose I might renegotiate with my conscience.

This is the first time I noticed NowPublic.com and I’m not sure yet what I think of it. Will it be a citizen journalism media frenzy? Or get clogged up with people ranking hot chicks as news?

“We are not just a digg, where we are focused on the editorial stuff, or a Flickr, where we are focused on photography, or YouTube, where it is just video, or Blogger, for that matter, where it is just written stuff. We are pretty much everything…. We organize all of the information around these news events and people can collaborate and report on news stories from whereever they are with whatever device they are using.” Michael Tippett, CEO Founder of NowPublic.com [source]

At a conference for public broadcasting in February, a panelist asked this question: Which is more real, 200 cellphone pictures of an event or a 30 second story by a reporter? The question draws attention to the bias any individual has in telling a story. Hundreds of people telling the same story adds credibility. So giving people a platform should be a great idea… but I’m still a little sceptical of the process. I still think there is a cultural divide of people who are consciencious and those who just don’t care. At the moment, NowPublic’s top stories are about burlesque, sex symbols, fashion, and tattoos. Go figure.

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borders media music photo pop culture

When will Latin Alternative music break through?

I heard this story on NPR today about Latin Alternative music having a tough time making a real market impact:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5251735

I met Josh Norek (one of the voices in the story) about 4 years ago at a Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York. He’s done a lot of work to promote the genre, including his own band the Hip Hop Hoodios. Check out their music in iTunes.

Here’s a photo of Ely Guerra I took at LAMC in 2002:

Ely Guerra in NYC 2002

For those who don’t know, I hosted a latin alternative music show on WRPI in Troy, NY called Border Pop Radio. I could post playlists if anyone is interested. The show was started by el Vampiro Fronterizo (aka Marco Loera) who spins in the deserts of Arizona.

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culture crit download history news radio

StoryCorps in San Diego

StoryCorps MobileBooth
StoryCorps is an oral history project that sends their MobileBooth around the country, allowing two people to interview each other about their lives. The participants receive a copy of the 40-minute interview; another copy goes to the Library of Congress to permanently archive the voices of our time. At KPBS, I’m producing excerpted stories from the booth for broadcast. We started airing the pieces this week, and will continue into March. Check out this hilarious story:

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Ramón “Chunky” Sanchez is a musician who played an active role in the Barrio Logan protests that led to the creation of Chicano park. His parents were farm workers, and when he first started public school he spoke only Spanish. Here, Chunky Sanchez talks with his friend Jose “Pepe” Villarino about what it was like for Mexican-American students in the 1950s.

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culture crit photo web

Flickr: Social Constructs

I started a public Flickr group to focus on visualizing social constructs. There are already many photographers from all over the world contributing. If you have work that deals with social construction, please join and submit your work: http://www.flickr.com/groups/socialconstructs/

This group shares images and ideas that deal with socially constructed boundaries. Race, class, sex, beauty. Social constructs shape the way we perceive ourselves and others around us. Pink for girls, blue for boys. Do my teeth really need to be whiter? These modes of thought come out of specific social contexts (political, cultural, social, economic, scientific, etc). When the context is analyzed, their artificial nature can be revealed and often unravelled.

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Why life in southern California is so expensive

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Video postcard from Zulma currently in Troy, New York.

I lived in Troy from 2001-2004 and my limbs still remember the numbing cold. It still hurts a bit watching that video. A snowplow once left my car packed into the snowbank up to the windows, leaving me no option but to dig it out with a piece of cardboard I got out of a dumpster. I don’t miss the pain of thawing my fingers out over the stove. One thing I do miss is how quiet it gets after it snows. Aside from that pesky sense of touch, my other senses really enjoy the winter.

For those of us not living in the tundra, it is a clear reminder why we put up with the ridiculous cost of living in SoCal. And for the rest of la raza in upstate New York, don’t forget to keep an ice scraper and shovel in the trunk.