Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Why this blog?

Why this blog?

'' The Atacama Desert of northern Chile like most physical deserts is a place of great surprises. In the midst of its apparent aridity and lifelessness it has provided human beings with the greatest view of the universe available on earth and its copper and other mining resources have brought great wealth to the Chilean economy....

This desert challenges assumptions and surface judgments and that is what this blog hopes to do...

...years ago while organizing campaigns around violence prevention in East and South LA, stories of teachers or police officers demeaning kids as having no possibility of success because of the neighborhoods they lived in, became all to popular...

...just as in  the desert there are Urban Neighborhoods/Poblaciones in cities across our world that are perceived to have nothing to offer...

...when in reality they are tabernacles of great hope...

...I too come from the urban desert of cousins lost to gang violence and uncles undergoing deportation procedures...

...If our societies are to develop so that all have the ability to achieve their potential...

...They must stop ignoring the desert voices....

...Voices echoing from the working kids on the outskirts of Quito, the troubled mothers a midst the projects of Nickerson Gardens, the high school mentors in the Poblacion of Nogales in Chile, the singing indigenous children undergoing racial injustice in Central Vietnam, the broken lives of the non tourist streets of New York City, and many more spaces that offer us a face to face encounter with both raw brokenness and raw hope...

....there are many already listening attentively to these desert voices...

...there needs to be more...

...our humanity, our salvation, is intertwined with the fate of these urban communities...

...this Blog seeks to use poetry and prose to tell their story...

-Carlos Rodriguez 

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