Hector Selector is the drummer for the Just Us band from Anaheim. He likes funk jams, reviewing restaurants and Chicano rap. After a recent Just Us rehearsal session, Selector gives us his “After Jamz” perspectives on life. In this premiere episode, Selector talks good eats in LA/OC. Picks: Ocha Classic Thai Food in LA and Athenian Burgers in Buena Park! (Get the chilaquiles extra spicy @ Athenians for breakfast. They’re not on the menu, though. You gotta know somebody. Tell ‘em you know Hector Selector!)

Stay tuned for Episode 2: The art of ‘coming up’ at your neighborhood swap meet! Spread the word!

In contrast to the courtroom in Los Angeles, today the streets of Oakland returned a guilty verdict for killer cop Johannes Mehserle in the shooting death of 22 year old Oscar Grant. The murder was caught on film on New Years Day 2009 at a BART station in Fruitvale. Mehserle claimed during the trial that he thought he had reached for his taser instead of his gun when he discharged a bullet into the back of a detained Grant. The jury in the subsequent case returned a guilty verdict only of involuntary manslaughter; a predictable miscarriage of justice. Photos come courtesy of the homie Bremner up in the Bay.

Killer cops don’t exist in the justice system of the United States. A protester confronts a line of policemen in Oakland following news of the verdict.

Oakland was a virtual ghost town as many exited. Some angered people gathered anyway to voice their displeasure. The police were out in full force to greet them.

A shot from above of a crowd of protesters that had gathered in the Bay Area city.

Freeways were jammed as many fled the city of Oakland in anticipation of a less than just verdict and the manifestation of indignation that might have followed.

Angels owner Arte Moreno is mums the word about SB 1070, but a cadre of LA/OC protesters won’t be when the All-Star Game comes to Anaheim next month. Read about the upcoming effort to have the 2011 All-Star game moved from the anti-immigrant hate state of Arizona in my latest Orange Juice blog post:

http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2010/06/immigration-protests-set-to-hit-all-star-game-in-anaheim/

Gangs are a mental health problem. Now ask yourself, when have you heard the social phenomenon described in such a manner? Gangs are usually solely depicted as a ‘menace’ that only the Prison-Industrial Complex is fit to address. However, for twenty-years, Father Gregory Boyle has guided Homeboy Industries as an alternative model under the banner of ‘nothing stops a bullet like a job.’ His decades of experience working with Los Angeles gang members is encapsulated in the newly released memoir “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.” The book reads as an unlikely spiritual tome on the transformation of lives that society, through schools and the economy, has all but looked the other way and given up on. Father Boyle, who learned about the social gospel in Bolivia during the 1980s, weaves through reflections of truly ‘correctional’ and ‘rehabilitative’ results.

The profound sense one attains when reading ‘Tattoos on the Heart” is the core belief resting at the pit of every gang member’s soul; worthlessness. By giving a job, and by that, worth to the lives of homeboys and homegirls, they can begin to refashion their self-images into something more positive and fulfilling. It’s that easy and at that point, the life of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that informs their suicidal urges to pull jales in enemy territory wears down. There’s no shortage of understanding how that sense of shame and worthlessness is implanted in the first place. Poverty and its hardships reinforce the notion. Although Father Boyle doesn’t spell it out in his book, the lives of gang members can be seen as a distorted outcome of internal colonization – something the modern mental health establishment would never seriously acknowledge. People of color have to wrestle with the psychological implications of an ethno-classist society and a mass media that reflects it. Gangs annihilate each other upon the altar of this injustice.

“Tattoos on the Heart” will make you laugh and break your heart just the same. It will inspire your dormant faith and yet alternately challenge it. There is more than one story of a homeboy or a homegirl who takes employment with Father Boyle only to have his or her past catch up in the form of an ill-timed and fatal bullet. In these moments, it’s human, all too human, to wonder where God is…or if divinity is simply a potential within ourselves to bend towards the light without any guarantee of safety in this chaotic world.

The most unfortunate circumstance is that the book’s release coincides with a time when Homeboy Industries has laid off 300 employees due to underfunding and the effects of the economic recession. All too quick to hand big banks bailouts, where is the government now to lend its help to homeboys and homegirls who have chosen to straighten out their lives? Too bad there isn’t a Homeboy-Industrial Complex where transformation, not incarceration, is deemed ‘profitable’ enough.

It has almost been a week since hundreds of thousands took to the streets of cities across the nation to demand dignity for immigrants in the United States. The very talented Carla Zarate of Sol Art Media & Design has put together a proper video montage of the marches that went down in Los Angeles and Santa Ana. Enjoy the sights and sounds of last weekend’s movement for justice against stupidities like Arizona’s SB 1070! Humanity, Si! Xenophobia, No!

The latest music video from Chilean-born, California bred Pilar Diaz’s self-titled solo debut is finally out! The ever-so timely “Ilegal En Estyle” comes at a time when hundreds of thousands of people across the nation rallied on May Day against Arizona’s draconian SB1070 anti-immigrant law. Always a polarizing issue, Diaz manages to inject a delicate humanism into the issue of immigration through the song that should make xenofools think twice about demonizing the other. Photos of pro-immigrant marches past are interspersed throughout the video and come courtesy of Gerardo Cornejo! Now beam this into Arizona until they learn how to get “Ilegal En Estyle” and repeal their legislative pendejadas!

The LA Riots of 1992

Back in the day on April 29th, 1992, a predominantly white jury acquitted four LAPD officers in the videotaped beating of a black motorist named Rodney King. Anger directed at the verdict and at the shooting death of teenager Latasha Harlins in a grocery store the month before erupted into nearly a week of social unrest in the city. Spurred by the longstanding underlying grievances of poverty, unemployment and police brutality in South Central LA, rioting lasted for six days as fifty-three people were killed. Thousands of fires were set and more than one thousand buildings were destroyed. Damages topped one billion dollars. By the fourth day, military personnel were dispatched to fortify law enforcement officials as mass arrests ensued quelling the city.

If a riot is the language of the unheard, were the six days in spring eighteen years ago listened to? Or do many of the same tensions bubble beneath the city’s surface?

This is the donpalabraz.com pick of the week! Krudas Cubensi, a female hip hop trio originating from Cuba, the Guerrilla Queenz and Xaris of Los Angeles, all know how to rock a mic right. Do yourself a favor and check out these sistahs on stage this Friday night at Senor Fish in LA! (that last sentence rhymed!)

The press release reads as follows:

On Friday March 12, the Los Angeles Academy of Arts & Enterprise charter school (LAAAE) is holding a benefit concert featuring international folk artists Inti-Illimani at the Los Angeles Theater Center (514 S. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013)

One show only starts at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are on sale at http://thelatc.org/

The concert will celebrate LAAAE’s recent charter renewal by the Los Angeles Unified School District.  On March 2, 2010, LAUSD voted unanimously to approve the school’s charter for an additional five years.

In support of the Chilean earthquake victims, LAAAE is offering a limited number of community concert tickets at $30, reduced from $100.  A percentage of these ticket sales will be donated to the Chile Earthquake Relief Fund via the Chilean Embassy.

La Santa Cecilia, a vibrant and promising band from Los Angeles known for its irresistible mastering of Latin music’s most danceable genres, made its first foray into Orange County back in November 2008 as part of the “Frida Festival” in Santa Ana. El Centro Cultural de Mexico in conjunction with other local organizations hosted the event that featured vendors selling all things Frida and the English/Spanish lectures of renowned speaker Gregorio Luke on the Mexican artist. Before delivering his evening talk in English, the six piece band took to the stage of a large auditorium in the city’s Fiesta Marketplace to open for Luke as hundreds of people streamed through the doors. At that point, La Santa Cecilia had been largely unknown to the Latino audiences of Orange County. After the band delivered an impressive five song set featuring tracks off their hand painted demo, the first conquista was had. Outside the venue, the band was meeting the demand for their CDs and speaking with those interested in bringing them back soon!

And so they returned. Weeks later, La Santa Cecilia opened for Pilar Diaz at the invitation of Santa Ana’s local Latina theater group Breath of Fire for its annual ‘Noche de Milagros’ fundraiser. The lineup had already been a potent one-two punch for LA Latinos checking out the solo efforts of the former Los Abandoned front woman in her workshop shows in Echo Park. That evening, OC had its second taste of the band’s intoxicating spirit and more fans were conquered. A year would pass before La Santa Cecilia would return to Santa Ana. In that time, the spaceless Latino youth of OC would trek en masse to downtown Los Angeles to catch the band performing at Mucho Wednesdays at La Cita. Their first gig back in Santa Ana last year would come not a moment too soon in November for an open-air world music street festival near the Fiesta Marketplace. The audience was cross-generational and many did not know what to expect from the band of jovenes setting up their congas, drums, upright bass, and guitar. It was essentially a replay of their Frida Festival experience. Accordion notes opened their norteña song “Chicle” as young and old danced on the closed streets of Santa Ana. Another instant conquest.

Much as in 2008, La Santa Cecilia would not keep its growing audiences waiting too long. Breath of Fire’s annual fundraiser came calling weeks later. The demand for the band was high and they obliged, only this time as the headliners. Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly penned a feature on La Santa Cecilia ahead of the gig giving them more print exposure than they had enjoyed in the pages of the LA Weekly despite being a more prominent fixture in the music scene of the widespread metropolis to our north. That evening of the fundraiser show, hundreds of supporters of both the band and the community theater group packed the 511 space in Santa Ana where the event was held. From the first song, the baile de la conquista was on once more satiating an appetite that had developed for seconds! Familiar chants of otra! otra! persuaded the band to extend the evening for one more song – an interesting musical take on the classic “Moliendo Cafe.”

Having forged a bond with the city’s non-profit hustlers, the members of La Santa Cecilia set their eyes next on a Valentine’s show with local fixtures Taller Sur. This time, the tandem of community musicians would be the sole attraction and focus at the 511 space. On Saturday night, couples and singles came in droves to enjoy the music of the two bands. The setlist turned in by LSC later in the evening featured recognizable songs off their demo like “Jack” and “El Farol” but on this occasion they were the exception. New material and interesting covers such as the Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever” mixed with the flavors of ska illustrated the band’s sonic evolution and growth. The musical masses predictably danced once more only this time La Santa Cecilia’s audience had seemingly branched out beyond the humble seeds that were planted back in November 2008. On the eve of Valentine’s Day, the spaceless Latino youth of OC enjoyed another night of music with a band their primos in LA have had the privilage of dancing to all too often!