One thing that caught my attention while reading this wistful, insidery feature in The New York Times about President Obama’s future (apparently a “post-presidential infrastructure” is involved) was a certain someone who attended a swanky dinner party at the White House recently. Sure, Toni Morrison was there, as well as Malcolm Gladwell and Eva Longoria, […]
Read more
Last night we had a very exciting show on Living in Spanglish, broadcast on WBAI FM in New York. I began the show lamenting the challenges faced by Mexico, whose journalists are increasingly assassinated; the Dominican Republic, which is pursuing a highly discriminatory if not racist policy of deporting long-time resident Haitians, and of course, […]
Read more
Just borrowing this image from the opening the other day around beautiful Bruckner Boulevard’s end at the southern tip of the Boogie Down–it was the return of City Maze by Jane Dickson and Crash, two pivotal figures in Fashion/Moda, an art thing that happened in the Bronx so many years ago. It kind of represents […]
Read more
This weekend Puerto Rico will most likely fall short–there is some semantic argument on whether this constitutes default–on a $58 million payment due from its Public Finance Corporation. Many view this as a first step in debt restructuring, if for no other reason than it offers further proof of what Governor Alejandro García Padilla said […]
Read more
Note: I’m re-posting this piece from a couple of years ago about Eddie Figueroa, founder of New Rican Village, an arts space that thrived on Avenue A in the East Village in the 1970s. Because of all the recent attention being given to the Young Lords era as a result of three excellent art exhibits […]
Read more
Full disclosure: I’m the type of dude who likes to go out into the street, smell the fragrant odor drifting from a nearby waste transfer station, watch as the wind blows fragments of dust and paper refuse into my face, and scan the streets for a cab. That is, when I can afford a cab, […]
Read more
For this island teetering on bankruptcy, debt renegotiation is imminent—but on whose terms? By Ed Morales New York–born Puerto Rican activist David Galarza spent this sultry summer Monday picketing a meeting of bondholders by day and meeting with professionals, students, and working people in the evening concerned about the increasingly scary crisis over the island’s […]
Read more
Last week I interviewed Li Samuet, lead vocalist of Bomba Estereo, and we got to talking about the band’s song “To’ My Love,” from their new album Amanecer. First she schooled me on the fact that the song title meant “To’” as in “Todo My Love,” since I’d pronounced it “To.” Then she explained that the song […]
Read more
Last Sunday, backstage at the Afro-Latino Festival at Restoration Plaza in Bed Stuy, I spoke with Cultura Profética bassist Eliut González and drummer Boris Bilbraut about the Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Cultura has long espoused out of the box ways to deal with US colonialism, including, in songs like “No Me Interesa,” critiquing overconsumption and […]
Read more
The Roots of Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis and Why Austerity Won’t Work The US government is at least partially responsible for the emergency, which is affecting millions of what are effectively second-class citizens By Ed Morales Riding through the hills of Canóvanas with Prima, a vacationing 65-year-old Brooklynite who was born and raised in the […]
Read more
ED MORALES 