Starting the morning off at 9AM after a long night chatting with the NGLTF staff took its toll as I rushed to make my first workshop on time.

The Youth of Color Organizing Summit put on by FIERCE, was fierce. There were about 40 youth of color who come from so many different walks of life with just one goal. How to better organize ourselves and our peers. The amount of energy in that room was AMAZING. I love being surrounded by so many like-minded, brilliant, youth. They each shared so much about themselves and the work they day. It was great to have youth opening up so much about the folks they work with and the issues that they may be facing.

I was in a very small set of youth that work within organizations that practice equitable youth adult partnerships and authentic youth voice. Makes me love my city of PDX all that much more.

Topics covered included, systems of oppression, types of discrimination, building your (membership) base, organizational structuring and even got to learn a little more about FIERCE (an organization that was created for and by youth) that made me reflect back to my organizations at home. I felt at home with all of these youth and it was very easy to share what we do to deal with issues as they arise.

Near the end we split up into 4 groups to talk about specific issues youth were having in their organizations. Building membership base, including allies, youth adult partnerships, retention/aging out of members. These topics built off of the training we had taken earlier on scripting recruitment and starting a campaign. We used a lot of real life examples and how to strategically win a campaign lead by youth.

I think my biggest take home today revolved around the fact that most youth still don’t understand the power the hold in an organization. That by the mere fact that we are the service recipients we control the power and should advise our organizations about the needs we have. It is important to note that although we suffer many forms of oppression, we have a unique ability and power to overcome any obstacle we face.

Can’t wait for what day two will hold.

P.S. I started a Twitter Account recently and am having a hard time figuring out all the @ and #’s and where they go/what they do, so if you have advice please share.

My name is Ernesto Dominguez my friends call me “E”. I am a 21-year-old youth living in Portland, Oregon. I was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and grew up in the beautiful city of Salt Lake. If I had to define my sexual orientation today, I would say Queer; I tend to mostly just think of myself as a sexual being that is attracted to other sexual beings. If I had to define my gender identity today, I would say I consider myself cisgendered, but also gender queer. At its core, what that means is, my gender expression tends to fluctuate (sometimes dramatically) from month to month, or sometimes day to day. On the other hand though, I have always really enjoyed my male body and never felt a need to change it in any way.

My coming out experience was different from my non person of color (POC) peers for a number of reasons, thus making it quite different then other youth. Because I was not “white” my mother would always tell me to try and fit in, instead of standing out. That simply by being gay, I was making myself stand out from the rest of the population and subsequently was making my family stand out. My sexual orientation was a reflection not just on myself, but also on the rest of my family. Our family already had a “strike” against us for being from another country and my sexuality only served to give my family another strike.

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At least five Republican senators have announced their intention to support Sotomayor, making confirmation by the Democratic-controlled Senate a virtual certainty.

Day 3

New Media Town Hall

First up was a town hall discussion about the importance of using new media (blogs, twitter, facebook, myspace, google groups etc) to organize our community and simultaneously change the views about Latinos in “mainstream” media. A panel of experts (one of which was our very own Ariel Cerrud, peer resource educator and talented speaker) delved into the idea that any person, in any place can use new media as a voice for themselves and their community. One panelist urged the importance of “starting small” covering an issue that doesn’t seem too large to research with the later goal of moving onto a bigger issue. “Eventually you will realize that no issue is too big to cover. 

Anther panelist spoke to the importance of holding “traditional/old” media sources accountable for what they cover through our net-activism work. That as “experts” in our own communities we have the power to make sure Latinos are portrayed in a REAL way in the media. Ariel spoke to the idea that “even by updating your facebook status when you get to the conference” you are being an activist in your community. “I would challenge you to rethink the way that you see yourself, you dont have to be a blogger or big online to make a big difference.” 

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Day 2

After spending the morning looking for a place to have breakfast that wasn’t 1. very expensive or 2. had a long wait line we finally settled on Starbucks (ironically one of the major sponsors for NCLR) we arrived for an opening check-in with the Lideres staff. 

A “breakthrough improv” performance welcomed us to the second day of the summit and after a few jokes and laugh we moved to our first workshop. This time I chose “Mobilizing youth in 2009: Your Role in the Path to Immigration Reform”

A workshop that spoke to the importance of realizing our rights as Latinos and human beings. How Latino youth can be important, passionate and powerful advocates in the immigration debate. Going as far back as Reagan's administration we were given the facts about “the state of immigration reform in this nation. More and more I saw ways in which every person living in the United States IS affected by immigration and only when we stop looking at immigration as a “color” issue can we move forward on comprehensive immigration reform. I was so proud to be in a room with so many youth who felt immigration reform was one of the most important issues facing our community and wanting to be part of the fight.

The last workshop I attended at the Lideres Summit was “Spending to survive: you and your credit card” A workshop that presented some very important information about credit card debt and the Latino community. 

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In reflection to Sarah's Post, here is my account of the first day in Chicahho 

First impressions,

(Sarah, this is for you)

So lets see, thinking about to high school, (it really wasn't that long ago, but does still feel like it) one sex education class seems to stick in my head the most. I remember one year that our class was separated into two classrooms, “Boys” in one classroom and “Girls” in another. Mind you, no one actually asked about gender and just went by perceived sex. Once in our respective classrooms we were bombarded with information about how our bodies are changing, where we would grow hair. (as if we didn’t know this information from middle school) They played a video on childbirth, yes childbirth, the video showed just a women in labor, all the pain she was going through and then a very disgusting shot of the baby exiting their mothers womb. As if this wasn’t enough to scare us they then invited in a group of youth to talk to us about “Love”

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Today I had a short, but none the less interesting discussion with my boyfriend about family. We've talked about this before a bit, but today it came up while he was writing a college paper on family communication (or something to that nature). He was telling me about what the definition of family is, and how this definition is truly based mainly in ones own experience. 

Take for instance a youth that comes from a "privileged" home. This youth comes from a home with both a Father (masculine/aggressive figure) and a mother (feminine/passive figure). A youth from a home with two parents would see this type of household as a family. A homeless youth might have a totally antithetical view of what a family consists of. Parallel to these arguments are the ideas behind biological family vs. chosen community. Some would say that only your relatives can be part of your family, while others might say that only those who you do not share blood with can share that deep of a connection with. 

Can we consider the saying "blood is thicker than water," to be subsequently irrelevant? 

When thinking about family, I actually consider almost all of the people I am biologically related to, to not be part of my family. The fact that they are only relatives of mine, because that is what I was told all my life makes me weary of these relationships. For all I know they could have just been the people who found me in the gutter. Does this fact make them any less of a part of my family? 

Questions like this make me define family in a looser term:
Family is (for me at least) the people who I choose to surround myself with, who I love, (this is a big key to my definition, and possibly the most important point) and who love me.

There are some other details that are not mentioned in this definition, but I feel this simple synopsis serves to define family in a meaningful way. 

What do you think?

Ernesto

Watch it and spread the word, "like the herpes for good"

Ernesto

A message to think about? Please Read!

I recently was looking through some messages and I found this bulliten from someone I know. I am curious as to what others think about this...Please respond.

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So, the other day I got into a conversation with a co-worker of mine about the idea of some people having their free speech "limited" (which is a nice way of saying "bullied out of") by neo-yuppie, overly sensitive pansies who just can't seem to let these pass.

She was talking about an old coworker of hers who, if anyone said the words "retarded", "gay", or anything of the sort (even as a f*ing JOKE) he would go off on tangents about respect, and tolerance, and would basically bully people out of saying certain things through guilt trips, anger bouts, or even through the threat of getting a manager on their asses.

So, what we have here is someone who bullies people out of their own constitutional right to free speech, by threat of negative emotional impact, or destruction of livelihood. Nice.

There should be no words that certain people can't use within the English language. Free speech is FREE SPEECH.

The gay community can openly use the word "faggot", or "queer", or the like, but if a straight person says it, it's offensive.
Look at Isaiah Washington from Grey's Anatomy. He was doing great in Grey's Anatomy, but he says "faggot", and then the shit hits the fan, and later on he's dropped like a f*ing rock.

Black people can call each other "the N word" all the time, but if anyone else says it, they're racist.
Look at Don Imus. So this dumbass says something the black community doesn't like. He apologized, move on. OH NO! Apparently an apology isn't good enough, so they boycott his sponsors into dropping him, and destroying his entire livelihood. Lovely. That's right, an apology wasn't enough for Al Sharpton and the black community. Hey, Reverend... I thought the whole "God" thing was about forgiveness. Or is there some kind of clause that says you can't forgive white people?

The general message here is that if you say ONE thing that a particular minority group doesn't like... your life is over!

F*ing bullshit. If I want to call someone a chink, or a spic, or a dyke, or whatever, I am damn well allowed to do so. They're just words

"But, words can hurt!"

Well, only if you're an overly sensitive, hypocritical pussy. Go fuck yourself with a tire iron, and grow up. Or, at the very least save it for someone who gives a flying fuck.

One things we minorities do wrong is that we pressure people out of their freedom of speech or freedom of expression just so we can feel secure. It is within my opinion that, at least in regards to the gay community, no one would give a s*t about us trying to advance our rights if we didn't make such a big f*ing deal about everything. If we just casually brushed off people calling us faggots, or queers or whatever, instead of limiting what they can say, then we might get a little bit more respect than we do.

Pressuring people into not saying certain phrases or such other is forcing our beliefs on them, which is something that should not be done. Beliefs should be given time to slowly integrate together, not forced upon. But, for the sake of "equality", we force our beliefs onto other people.

Not all heterosexuals are inherently homophobic. Not all white people are inherently racist bastards. And not all minorities are hypocritical speech censors.

There are a few. But really, at this stage of evolution, you'd think that we'd be past all this, and just learn to not give a flying f*k.
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I think this person makes a few good points, but went about it the wrong way. They made them self seem uneducated and bias. (especially with all the swear words) While trying to make people see that every one should be able to say what they want, all this person has done is gone on a rant that fires up people on their side and proved a point for the people on the side of pc work-places. I am torn on this topic because I may be for free speech, I am not for hate speech and the line between the 2 is hard to draw sometimes. I myself am a fan of reminding people what the words they use can be viewed as bigoted and ignorant. If someone around me goes off saying " that cd is gay" i jump in with "oh really i didn't know that cd liked cds of the same gender" and so on. on the other hand, like I said for me the line of free and hate is zig zaged so im not one to make any comments because I don't even know where i stand with all that.

I fell like this person could have made their point without sounding this way by just writing in such an inflamed manner. I agree that I would never say it is okay for ANYONE to use the "N word" even now I cant bring myself to type it. For no other reason than I do not want to sound aggressive or ignorant. I do understand the power of reclaimed words, but don't understand how part of reclaiming the word is not allowing the group that has traditionally used this word in an offensive way can help this cause. I have never and would never ask someone who used the word queer to stop. I find that even the people who use it in a negative way are giving "us" free advertisement for this word. I also have never had a school administrator reprimand a youth for saying "Queer" in school.

I guess this conversation is more about self identification and how each person feels about each word. I just wish there was a glossary or dictionary of appropriate terms. I do have bigger problems with people being "PC" to sound less offensive when they don't truly understand why we don't use those words.

Ernesto

This blog post is meant to help deflate and hopefully answer some of the tricky questions surrounding cheating. No for those who might be a little lost, I am not talking about cheating as in the "hiding an ace in your sleeve", or "having insider information." I am talking about relationships and my views around the ideas of physical, mental, emotional cheating.

I have had this conversation with a number of people in my life (some of these people have been people I have dated) and each person seems to have different views on this subject. At first the answers to some of the basic questions (ie. is cheating bad, what is cheating, can you forgive someone who cheated, can cheating be good etc.) seem simple and people tend to have a straight forward answer, but after more questions as to how some of these things are negotiated, many people seem thrown off and confused. 

Take for instance the first question, now..it might seem like the question "is cheating bad" would have such a simple answer, YES. But by saying yes, have we really considered all sides of the argument?  Imagine a couple that bonds perfectly together in a mental/emotional way, but have little or no physical attraction to each other. Should those people split up? Should they allow other people into their relationship to fill that physical need? I am not one to condone cheating, and actually expect everyone in a relationship to be totally honest about needs and expectations, but I do also understand that in some relationships, cheating can actually be good. (I know this might seem crazy, but bare with me)

Now this kind of brings me to my second point. What is cheating? Some would say it is having sex with/being sexual with someone outside of your relationship. Others would say is has less to do with action and more to do with connection. This could be physical, or mental, even a social attraction can exist. I believe that it is more about intent: If someone in a relationship is having dinner with a friend it can be seen as innocent. If that same person is having dinner with a friend that they find attractive and are trying to find a way to test the "relationship waters," then it is cheating. Also if someone is making friends (usually through social networking sites) and is doing so with the intent to maybe later "hook up." Again to me this is cheating. Weather the relationship is physical, or not has little to nothing to do with cheating. 

Even the idea of "pre-cheating" or building relationships with people that you find attractive and could later see yourself dating, is still cheating. Again it would not matter if all you are doing is hanging out at a party or alone in your home. The idea that you are setting up a "possible" next relationship is cheating. 

So how do you/can you forgive someone for cheating? This last point I think is more of a personal choice. I cant say I have the perfect answer, heck I cant even say I have an answer at all. I tend to judge each incident and relationship differently. Almost like each "type" of cheating has its own point value system. How do you feel about this one? What are your views on cheating? Is it good or bad? Can someone who cheated be forgiven and trusted to not repeat that mistake? what is your definition of cheating?

I would love to hear from you.

~Ernesto

 

I had the pleasure of seeing Religulous last night with my boyfriend. Religulous is a documentary film directed by Larry Charles and starring American political comedian Bill Maher. This movie depicts a variety of world religions from the eyes of people who practice said religion, or people who practiced in the past. 

Bill Maher takes a satirical and childlike eye to what these religions believe. He travels from "holy" location to "holy" location. Visiting places like Jerusalem, the Vatican (is it proper to capitalize "The Vatican"? Do we do it only because it has religious significance?) and Salt Lake City. Through these travels he meets a number of "worshipers" who he proceeds to question about their beliefs. Now, normally I find it very offensive to questions someone's faith, but seemed a little less hesitant knowing that any of those people could have easily left during the interview. 

I guess the intended purpose of this film was for Bill to understand religion more. I think it only left him more and more confused. It was interesting at times, funny most of the time, and even a bit scary. This move hit to a lot of touchy subjects for people ie. homosexuality (I hate this word), Good Vs. Evil, Jesus Vs. God, Jews Vs. Christians, and even challenged gender binaries and ideas of heteronormativity. (lol, amplify thinks this word is spelt wrong)  

Understanding that this is only one view of religion and a skewed one at that, I would recommend this flick to anyone looking for a not so serious view of religion and politics. I do warn those who might be offended easily and those who are fans of President Bush, this film does throw out some blows at multiple people/beliefs. 

My views on religion you ask...well thats a separate post, but if you are truly interested, then ask me.

Ernesto

The Advocates For Youth: Washington DC Retreat!

Right now DOZENS of activist youth from all over the country are gathered inside the Embassy suites hotel in downtown Washington DC talking about RIGHTS, RESPECT, RESPONSIBILITY!

What are you doing today to support the lives and rights of youth?!

Ernesto