Almost 30 years ago, U.S. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Illinois) awoke in his living room in the middle of the night only to realize it was engulfed in flames. Someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through his window, and it was all he could do to retrieve his wife and children from the modest house […]
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Cornel West at UPR: Militant Sweetness
Last Thursday, Professor Cornel West visited the University of Puerto Rico to give a talk with his Union Theological Seminary colleague, the Reverend Samuel Cruz. It was under the auspices of a group called Mesa Diálogo Martin Luther King, extraordinary in itself, and aimed, according to its spokesperson Juan Ángel Gutiérrez, to encourage dialog between […]
Read moreThe Making of “Babygirl”: A Bronx Tale
Film director Macdara Vallely came to the Bronx from Northern Ireland and quickly decided he wanted to use the Boogie Down as the canvas for his next film, Babygirl, which will make its theatrical debut this Friday, October 4th at the Quad Cinema in Greenwich Village. I met Macdara through some mutual friends, and immediately I understood […]
Read moreNY Times De Blasio Piece: Fair and Balanced
This morning the Times has a prominent feature on mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio that amounts to a classic piece of red-baiting. The issues raised in the article have next to nothing to do with the mayoral race, and features much of the same kind of jaundiced bias toward leftist activists that have appeared in the mainstream […]
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The Song They Should Play for Mariano
Man this whole Metallica thing really doesn’t make any sense to me. Mariano, I guess, being the gracious guy he is, accepted the whole thing like everything was cool. But I really don’t get what “Enter Sandman” has to do with anything. Just because they played the Apollo last night means they got soul I […]
Read moreMarshall Berman Vive
At Monxo’s thesis defense = doc party in a non-descript Irish bar rapidly vanishing into air somewhere between Murray Hill and landfill, he couldn’t stop talking about Marshall. I was reading him in Puerto Rico and I loved him and I came to New York because of him he said sadly and proudly. There he […]
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Gramsci Takes the Bronx
Wailing away like a 21st century version of the Fugs, the contemporary alterna-pop consortium known as Urayoán Noel/Edwin Torres with Los Guapos Planetas performs its counter-hegemonic re-working of the Talking Heads’ song “And She Was” at an open mike in my hometown of Morrisania. The lyrics re-imagine 20th century philosopher, organic intellectual, and Maxist journalist […]
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City Council Forum: Rumble Uptown
For some reason the New York Daily News mobile app went with this story about last night’s City Council forum on affordable housing, sponsored by East Harlem Preservation and JustPublics@365, as its lead this morning. The headline, “Ugly Council Debate Paints Melissa Mark-Viverito as a Gentrifier” seems designed to stir up some shock-value interest on another sleepy summer […]
Read moreAnother Annoying HuffPost Post Starring Erick Salgado
Yes, we know the Reverend Erick Salgado is a goofy guy who, as a mayoral candidate, is barely above clown status although he actually says interesting things at times. He’s played the raza card several times, most notably in objecting to Anthony Weiner’s fantasy about himself as a Latin lover stereotype called Carlos Danger. We’re not going to […]
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Bill de Blasio’s Mixed-Race Strategy
You’ve seen this Bill de Blasio campaign ad now about a million times now, and it still resonates. Even with the sound off, muting the tight mix of progressive sloganeering (tax the rich, create affordable housing, stop stop and frisk), the message comes through. Here is a family living a happy middle class life, acting […]
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ED MORALES 