Many of you may not know who Christopher Hitchens was, and its not all that surprising. Unless you’re an avid, perhaps even maniacal viewer of political news affiliates like FOX News or CNN (they both suck), or happen to follow the heated and complicated religion debate that is taking place every day in the United States, you may never heard of Christopher Hitchens.

But he was not just a British geek who debated the existence of God – he was a contributor to magazines like Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and Slate. He wrote a bunch of books and handed individuals like Sean Hannity and Jerry Falwell their asses on national television. Another thing: he was a party fuggin’ animal – Hitchens drank and smoked in excess. In 2006 an NPR profile said of him, “Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output.” In 2003 Hitchens said of himself, “my daily intake of alcohol is enough to kill or stun the average mule.” He often noted that many great writers did some of their finest work when “blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind.”

Many of Hitchens’ targets for critique were completely understandable: George W. Bush; our war policy in Iraq; Jerry Falwell; Hugo Chavez; Bill Clinton; and Jesse Helms. But it was his acerbic words for some others that made him incredibly unpopular at times, like: Gandhi; the city of New York; Bob Hope; and even Mother Theresa. But even if you did not drink from the same rocks glass as Hitchens’ when it came to his opinions (and many did not), it could not be denied that he was a brilliant man, a supremely intellectual rhetorician, and a fearless critic of things he saw as unjust.

In 2007, Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer shortly after his long anticipated memoir, Hitch-22 was released. He had given up drinking a year before that during a visit to Madison, Wisconsin because of what he described only as an “epiphany,” and upon being diagnosed with his disease, he quit smoking altogether.

Christopher Hitchens died December 15, at the age of 62. And although there are many human beings in the world that are happy he is out of their hair – I for one am not. Hitchens tirelessly preached the one thing that I do above all else: being critical. And he understood completely that this does not merely mean to pick at and complain about everything – but rather to use our mind and all the limitless education that surrounds us to decide for ourselves what is Truth. Of course he said it best:

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself … Picture all experts as if they were mammals.”

It is always around this time of year that I am faced with the same gut-wrenching and logic-nagging question: What makes me more nauseous: Mariah Carey’s Santa Costume or FOX News?

Every December, the adorable rag-tag gang over at FOX and Friends declares war on those they accuse of declaring war on Christmas, you know, just like Jesus would do!

This year they’re bucking the National anti-bullying campaign in favor of Rhode Island Governor, Lincoln Chafee, who they say refuses to label the Rhode Island Christmas tree, a Christmas tree (ed. note: I don’t believe choosing to type Tree Lighting on their invitation cards instead of Christmas Tree Lighting does not qualify as a refusal to do so). This audacious and sinful decision prompted one FOX and Friends guest to shout “Leave the Christ in Christmas!” (while wearing an adorable Santa hat that assumedly kept his head from exploding like a Christmas candy filled piñata), and the host of the program, Steve Doosey, to post Mr. Chafee’s phone number on the screen while encouraging viewers to call him personally to complain. The most wonderfully hypocritical point in the show (of which they have plenty) was when another commentator, Rachel something, used the counter point of the previous Governor’s inclusion of the term “Christmas Tree” on the invitations during his term, which, in the amazingly predictable manner of the show, is of course entirely false. In fact, Donald Carcieri, the previous Governor used the even more offensive, Holiday Tree, during his term. But FOX does not care about these untruths because they do not expect their insane amount of viewers to fact check anything they say, which is of course what makes them the prettiest girl at the dance.

What I really want to drive home here is this Network’s maniacal obsession with rewriting history. FOX has been ignoring easily discernable historical truths for years, and until Jon Stewart came along, no one called them on their horseshit. But in spite of the remarkable job Stewart and his writers do, millions of viewers still read FOX News like the rest of us read A People’s History. One of the more deplorable “characters” of the show, Laura Ingraham, saw Chafee’s Christmas tree debacle as a shining opportunity to hit her viewers with some serious historical knowledge:

“Why did these Pilgrims brave incredibly difficult, er, uh, conditions to live here, die here, and, and try to start a, uh, a new way of life for themselves, to find religious freedom. Yeah… yeah… and now religious freedom is on the rocks.”

Ugh. With the exception of Denmark, the United States is the paragon of religious freedom. Granted, at the moment we’re going through a skid mark phase with the Muslim community, and there are violent and political attacks on different religious groups here (as there are in any other free nation), but we are still pretty damn tolerant. But regardless of these remarkably transparent facts, Ms. Ingraham’s use of the Pilgrims as a dynamic example of religious suppression is outstanding, and an adept archetype of FOX’s historical standards and practices – you see, believe it or not, the Pilgrims hated the glorification of Christmas even more than Governor Chafee apparently does.

For those of you that may be unaware, the Pilgrims were super-religious Puritan separatists (remember their celebrated past time of burning witches, which we now know were prevalent then and surely run rampant in our Northeast territories today!). When the Pilgrims came to what is now our United States, they called themselves the Saints and they were accompanied by everyone else whom they called the Strangers (read The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell). The Strangers loved Christmas which did much to piss off the Pilgrims because they were severely opposed to religious holidays and the overt displays of religion that were so often associated with them (remember, they sort of hated Catholicism). The Pilgrims were also very much against forbearing work for the recognition of Christmas, and our earliest Congress was known for always working on Christmas Day – for nearly seventy years! As a matter of fact, in 1659, the Puritans (in Boston, but still) passed a law banning the celebration of Christmas that stated: “For preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries to the great dishonor of God and offense of others, it is therefore ordered that whoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, shall pay for every such offense five shillings to the county.” Christmas did not become an official Massachusetts holiday until 1856, but even then its celebration was unenthusiastic and certainly resembled nothing near what it does today. I guess Ms. Ingraham brushed over that chapter in her history book.

My point here is to encourage all of you to do your research – read your books – know your history. There are so many individuals in such high positions of power that use their influence to uneducate those who listen to them; banking on the idea that they will just take their words for fact. Don’t do that. And what is missed in all of this is who cares!? Seriously, friends, does this really matter? Is anyone telling you that you can’t call it a Christmas tree? Is anyone telling you that you can’t wish people a Merry Christmas? Is there anyone telling you that you have to say Happy Holidays? Of course there is not.

Celebrate what you want to celebrate. Wish what you want to wish. After all, this is not the Pilgrims’ America – it’s ours.

*facts provided by the Library of Congress and Roger Matile from his 2008 article, Celebrating and giving gifts at Christmas? Pilgrims would be aghast

Hey! How’s your job going? Do you like it? Are you working longer hours than you used to – maybe settling for no Christmas, er, “Holiday” bonus and no raise because you feel like you should be satisfied for no other reason than you have a job when so many Americans do not? Are you employed? If not, has your unemployment run out? These questions are being asked every single day to millions of Americans.

Many of us in the United States are still unemployed with a national average of 9% (which is bad, by the way) and our fellow brothers and sisters who make the Land of Enchantment their home, are struggling with an average of 6.6%.* Employment in the private sector has risen with modest growth in professional services, leisure, hospitality, healthcare, and mining – Government jobs are still falling – which, depending on who you ask, may prove that Mr. Obama is not only creating government jobs as Mr. Limbaugh claims on a daily-around-noon basis.

In the latest issue of TIME magazine, Stephen Gandel writes about how more of us are quitting. With 14 million people unemployed (and assumedly trying to find work), why are so many on the other side of the fence telling their bosses to eat it? According to Gandel (and the Bureau of Labor Statistics) 2 million people gave their two weeks in September, the highest number of documented workers to do so since November 2008. Why? Well, according to the deserters themselves, unhappiness. I think this is a good thing for two reasons:

1) (And most important) American workers are finally standing up for themselves, stepping outside of the looming shadows of their bully bosses who have been reducing pay, eliminating bonuses, increasing normal work hours, as well as doing away with other “perks” and gratitudes all under the guise of good business sense – when in reality many of our nation’s business leaders and office managers are taking such measures because they know the statistics and they know those numbers frighten their employees into accepting less than acceptable employment parameters simply out of survival instinct (or fear). And –

2) For those of us that are not unhappy in our work, or have not been able to pull out the marbles necessary to tell our bosses to eat dicks, our counterparts departures have created an opportunity for the rest of us to finally get that Christmas, er, “Holiday” bonus or standard of living increase in pay, or hell, if we’re lucky enough – both.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the twoindustries seeing the largest exodus of workers are Professional and Business Services (@ 426,000) and the Trade, Transportation and Utilities sectors (@474,000). This makes sense. If there is something any one of us could agree upon as unanimously as the lousy unemployment statistics, it’s this: as the horizon of the recession grows more infinite and unemployment rates remain high, Americans’ enthusiasm, pleasant demeanor, and overall ability to be around exponentially depletes. It’s getting harder and harder to endure one another.

We’re starting to embarrass ourselves – what happened to the badass, freedom loving, this is America – so be who you wanna be individuals that made the rest of our neighbors envious? Our country is having a colossal morale problem these days and it’s affecting our attitudes – we’re an entire country sharing a menstrual cycle and it’s doing us no good at all. Many of us are displaying signs of senioritis for LIFE! We’re starting not to care anymore. We’re starting to give up. And when that happens we forget what it is we’re supposed to do and much of it is coming through in our attempts at getting new jobs.

I work in an environment that revolves around hiring and firing people all over the world and in a time when more people need jobs than ever they’re screwing it up on a large scale. Believe it or not, regardless of your newly acquired cynicism, there are mores that we are expected to follow – an outline that has been created and distributed freely to us that not only reminds us how to act in the company of others, but actually does very well to help us get hired for jobs that we just may want.

In the coming week I will attempt to help you get your act together for building your resume and crushing your interviews all the while not coming across as so many of us are – as someone who just doesn’t give a shit anymore.

Stay tuned, friends – we’re not out yet.

*statistics courtesy of U.S. Bureau of Labor

A little over a month ago I attended the Occupy Santa Fe Movement downtown at the Roundhouse Capital Building. I spoke to organizers, protesters, and listened intently to their message for two reasons: 1) I support the movement utmost, and 2) As much inertia the movement has accumulated, something continues to nag at me, making me question its overall execution, and I wanted to find out what that was.

After I wrote the piece I received both positive and negative comments. Although I support the movement, I feel, perhaps, that certain localized individuals involved in it felt betrayed – maybe they assumed I was going to write nothing but a text book liberal glowing manifesto of the power of the people and the importance of changing the world, and in retrospect, perhaps I presented myself in a way that helped to reinforce these assumptions – I even recall at one moment on that Saturday thinking to myself, Am I laying this on a little too thick? I probably was. Hindsight’s 20/20. I am no imposter; I just wanted to get a truthful and genuine rejoinder from these people – these people that I respect and admire – these people I consider a part of my lineage.

But that was last time. I wanted to give the movement some breathing room before coming back to it, and a lot has happened since. As most of you know, Occupy Wall Street was born in New York but has since spread throughout our United States (and Canada) like an Ashton Kutcher tweet. The Occupy rally in Santa Fe was peaceful and blanketed in an aire of camaraderie and, well, a sense of safety; but this has not been true for all of the sites. As anyone with knowledge of grassroots movements could have guessed, the protesting sites have inevitably shifted from the concrete streets and sidewalks of downtown areas to the concrete pretend streets and sidewalks of college campuses. Although some on the Left would like to attribute city officials’ attempts to disband the protestors from the city blocks as a sign of right-winged aggression and eradication of 1st Amendment rights, a very logical reason may be more along the lines of the violence occurring at some locations (Oakland, California), multiple drug overdoses within the tent cities (Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia), the overall safety of citizens as a whole (fights breaking out at every location and one suicide, a war veteran at a camp in Burlington, Vermont), not to mention the garbage and filth accumulating in every location is bordering on a public health issue.

In Berkley: Only a handful of colleges have encampments, but tents went up last week at Harvard and at the University of California, Berkeley. Last Wednesday at Berkeley, a mass of 3,000 people gathered on Sproul Plaza to protest tuition increases along with the income inequality line that has been thread througout. Demonstrators linked arms to protect their tents, but police officers broke through and took down more than a dozen tents, and arrested roughly 40 protesters. The police circumvented the traditional series of eradicating escalation and went straight for the ultra-violence; spearing women (first, one very tiny, young Asian woman) in front of the crowd with their riot batons. Occupy protesters at UC Berkeley have vowed to remain peaceful and cooperate with police. But while many people who have demonstrated with Occupy Oakland also preach nonviolent disobedience, some have encouraged the tactics of the “black bloc,” which include attacking the police and vandalizing property. How Oakland.

In Salt Lake City: Permits that allowed people associated with the movement to camp in a downtown park, Pioneer Park, were revoked on Friday after a man was found dead. After this, demonstrators were given twenty four hours to leave. Officers moved in on Saturday night to remove those who did not heed the warning. Nineteen people were arrested. The same night, protesters in Denver were forced out of their encampment, the second park they have had to leave since demonstrations began. Seventeen people were arrested.

In St. Louis: Twenty seven people were arrested this past Friday night at Kiener Plaza. Many of the arrests are being justified due to people breaking city park curfews. The evictions keep coming in other cities as well including Albany, Portland, and Seattle.

Oakland: A few of weeks ago, the protests in Oakland were the first to get noticeably out of control and it was the first location to have a seemingly unmanageable level of violence. The mood has been intense since Scott Olsen, 24, an Iraq war veteran, was critically injured at a protest last month (he was shot in the face by riot police with a tear gas canister which fractured his skull). Mr. Olsen was released from the hospital last week and it has been reported that he can now read and write, but still has trouble talking.

City leaders continued to move toward a final clearing of the encampment that they dismantled on Oct. 25 (the protestors rebuilt it). On Sunday, officials issued their third eviction notice to the campers at Frank Ogawa Plaza (the protestors ignored it). Supporters of the camp, which first sprang up on Oct. 10, have vowed not to go willingly, and have agreed to meet at the Oakland Public Library which is about six blocks from the plaza – in the hours after any police raid – which they have also followed through on. Protesters managed to outlast a threat of eviction on Saturday, defying the city’s second demand in two days that they clear out; calls made after a man was shot near the protest area on Thursday which may or may not have had to do with the protests (although he was living in the tent encampment). On Sunday, demonstrators received a third notice from the city demanding they stop camping in city parks (which they ignored). Still, many Oakland leaders have decided there is more harm in leaving the camp alone. City officials also broadened the crackdown to three other parks where protesters have erected smaller, satellite camps: Snow Park, Jefferson Square and Lafayette Square, all in the greater downtown area. Drug use and violence have increased at the camps, leaving downtown workers intimidated and business owners crippled economically, according to some city officials.

As I said, a lot has gone on in the last few weeks. But all of this brings me back to my previous post: I genuinely think the impetus for the movement is strong and perfectly rational, but since its inauguration, it has evolved into protesting “Stuff That Sucks.” Without its presence in a vacuum, there will always be injury, violence, and vandalism during protests, it’s the nature of the beast, but where is the leadership? The Civil Rights Movement was grown on non-violent, peaceful protests that eventually erupted into the antithesis of those things, but ultimately had a leader to wrangle everyone back together, getting them back on track. Granted, the Occupy Movement will never have a Martin Luther King, Jr., hell, no movement will ever have another Martin Luther King, Jr., but it needs a voice – the voice of 99% of the nation’s population is far too dissonant, and certainly too loud to be coherent.

Some of you may not know this, but the Lowbrow Sophisticates do more than tickle your tummies with amusing posts; we are sometimes summoned to do PR work for various individuals and organizations. And with the recent tomato slinging going on with the next President of these United States, Herman Cain, we were asked to come up with some new catch phrase names for Mr. Cain with the intention of alleviating some of the pressure – something we did in our Washington D.C. office using our usual and successful brand of wit and creativity.

Check out the names below – names we were paid to come up with. And, as always, we encourage each and every one of you to submit your own agnomen concoction! We’ll post em as long as they’re not racist or riddled with good old American bigotry! And if enough of you send along your names, we’ll have a contest with Lowbrow Branded Prizes: Ashtrays, T-shirts, and Baby Nooks!

Herman “Muenster” Cain
Her “Man Candy” Cain
Hermoine “The Granger” Cain
Hermaid “The Man Fish” Cain
Herman “Cain I Touch Those”
Hermaner “The Settlement Determiner” Cain
Herman “The Other Wayans” Cain
Herman “Chocolate Brain” Cain
Herman “These Bitches Ain’t Germane” Cain
Herman “At Least It Ain’t Coke” Cain
Herman “Hussein” Cain (in honor of Fox News Corp.)
Herman “She’s t’ Blame” Cain
Her-Man-Dingo Cain
Herman “The Merman” Cain
Herm “Single Term” Cain
Herman “The Complain Train” Cain
Herman “Sexual Sugar” Cain

As I approached the Roundhouse from around the corner of the underground parking garage, I turned off my music in order to hear the megaphones and unison chants, expecting the collective noise to jack me up for the day’s righteous rally. Much to my chagrin, I heard nothing. Through the parking lot I came upon two organizers: a man and a woman. This can’t be it, I thought. All the pride I had felt, and let’s be honest, giddiness, had culminated into two community organizers and me – a chilly, unknown writer who was covering the rally on his own, without assignment from anyone?

So where the hell was everyone? Turns out I was an hour early. My pride, although bruised due to my overzealous punctuality, began to bubble back up and excitement rode in its side car. I helped the two friendly liberals put together a hacksaw to cut metal piping that would later be used to hold up signs. Soon after, another organizer arrived with his son. A few minutes after this two more arrived, then a couple more. A truck showed up carrying jugs of water, garbage backs, adhesive materials for signs, what looked like one hundred protest placards, and even a first aid kit. It was like a Democratic Protest Liberators starter kit. I was impressed, even more impressive were their attitudes; each and every one of them was beyond polite, definitely kind, and the perfect amount of enthusiastic, not overly so as to lead one to think them naïve or just plain crazy.

I was told the parade had started at East Devargas, near the Bank of America (which has been taking a pounding by protestors over the last three weeks), followed up St. Francis to Paseo, and down to the Roundhouse where their arrival would announce the beginning of the GA, or General Assembly to the protesting layman. A dozen or so individuals had walked up and after setting up a few tables, went straight to the pile of placards and took to the corners of Old Santa Fe Trail and Paseo. Within seconds of planting themselves on the corner, the honking of horns became ridiculously distracting (in a good way) as they let sign holders know that even though they could not be there with them, they were sympathetic to their cause. Upon hearing the horns, I decided to head over and get some video of their success, and it was when I came about I saw the head of the parade dragon. I was taken aback by how many people were marching. There were less people in the gay pride parade. As I danced through the traffic like Frogger, I heard the chants, We are the 99 percent… we are the 99 percent… whose too big to fail, we’re too big to fail… whose too big to fail, we’re too big to fail… and what seemed to be their sterling mantra, tell me what Democracy looks like, this is what Democracy looks like… tell me what Democracy looks like, this is what Democracy looks like.

I could hear by the pulse of the voices that everyone in that parade was participating vocally and all their words were kept in unison by a young man in the front who rhythmically pounded on a Djembe drum, keeping them in tune like a learned maestro. Their march culminated in front of the Roundhouse and it was a loud yet calming collective of drummers and sign holders, those on bikes and those pushing strollers, the aged standing with the youth as many held tightly to the leashes that held the liberal canines of Santa Fe.

A Native American woman by the name of Shea opened with a blessing or incantation that she spoke in her language as sage burned all around us. I thought it a perfect way to open the rally, and how oh so Santa Fe. After this, one of the organizers took to the podium and gave the crowd a brief history of the Occupy Santa Fe movement, focusing far more on the locality of their gathering than its birth mother from Wall Street. I was surprised by this, but after all, it was taking place in our city. His history was brief, but perfectly tight and informative, he did not stutter as he lectured and set the tone for the rest of those who spoke. As he wrapped up he explained that there would be one speaker and soap boxes for people to stand up on and aire their grievances whatever they may be. Whatever they may be? I suppose I was just expecting a little more focus on Wall Street and the opportunity to educate the public on what is actually happening out East and how, like through a series of veins, it was infecting the rest of our nation like a severe flu bug. But I did not organize it, and they seemed to be doing a helluva job, so I kept my mind shut.

After the Occupy Santa Fe event, I sat and thought about what it is I had been involved in for the past four hours and I came to the conclusion that Occupy Santa Fe was not as much about Wall Street and the specific daily deception and thievery that is taking place there, as much as it is about organization in general. At first my impression was that this particular group (I am cautious to stigmatize the entire movement, as I have only physically been to the Santa Fe occupation) seemed to be lacking in the arena of information giving. Placards are great and certainly the ribcage of the protesting skeletal system, but I cannot help but think a movement of this magnitude would benefit further with the inclusion of speakers that have a strong pulse in the vein of what is actually happening and why it ignited this movement in the first place. I struggled a bit trying to distinguish between two possible explanations: 1) perhaps I was just a late comer to the Santa Fe Occupation experience as a whole and I missed all the information giving that may have happened earlier in the week, possibly before, or 2) which is what I hesitantly lean towards, the organization is more concerned with the entity itself (dare I say the size of their numbers, the media?) than, again, the impetus for the occupation.

Being well-versed in the shit storm that is our current financial crisis (see yesterday’s article), I back handedly spouted out a half dozen statistics (double-fact checked information) to those that were organizing earlier in the day as I helped them set up their stations. I did not do this in an attempt to impress or “test” my new acquaintances, but rather to gauge their interest in the goad the greed and theft is having on our universal economy of which they are raising their voices against. Due to particular access I have to research materials, I know exact salaries of the CEO’s of these banks including their bonuses (which are quite honestly sometimes houses, boats, and gold caches) and during a discussion of the 1% of the population controlling three quarters of the nation’s wealth and us, the 99, making dick, I spouted off exact numbers of Ken Lewis (BofA) and Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs) compensation and this information was met with nods and dismissive scoffs that changed the subject. Granted, there is a helluva lot more important pieces of information dealing with this mess, but I expected the numbers I gave to ignite some rage, or at the very least, disgust. Maybe they were preoccupied with all that was going on, or they found my presence off-putting or hell, maybe they thought I was being a know-it-all, but from where I was sitting, they just did not seem to care that much at all.

My festering fears were picked at like a scab when they announced their soap box stations located on the premises, as I mentioned earlier, spots where any individual could aire their grievances no matter what the subject, a seemingly carnival stand that the organizers pointed out was the most popular attraction at each of their events. Do not get me wrong – and I cannot stress this enough – I am for nothing more than I am for the freedom of speech, it is without any second thought, the most important and precious component of our democratic state, and I admit that there is no better forum for such an “attraction” than at a rally. However, perhaps this could be a secondary thought to the surplus of knowledge that could be distributed throughout the day at a gathering such as Occupy Santa Fe.

As a citizen and a human, I could not be more supportive than I am of these organized movements, and I will continue to be for as long as I live, and the individuals that had gathered downtown today could not have been more gracious, compassionate and intelligent; it is just that I think this particular occupation in Santa Fe is missing a righteous opportunity to educate their masses on the undisputable facts that have led to this catastrophe, all the while giving their supporters a venue to speak their minds on whatever it is that urges them to occupy. Whether we are sitting in a bar discussing it over a pint, or in a one hundred person herd at the state capitol, complaining about corruption and our disappointment in their government surely makes us feel better, but our message can only be as powerful as the knowledge we possess in reference to it. Our liberal anger can be harnessed and used as the most powerful of tools if we know where to direct it at, otherwise we’re just contributing as sound bites to Fox and Friends.

My last point is to reaffirm my reader(s) that I think what the Occupy Santa Fe movement is doing is excellent and well organized, and I will continue to participate and help as much as I can, or as much as I am wanted (although, I imagine not too much after this), but I suggest tightening the focus on the matter at hand. Wall Street will not change if we show up to a rally that at one time centered on the corruption of banks and shout through a megaphone that your neighbors should buy local produce and one’s fear of the retraction of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Keep up the good work and I salute each and every one of you for having the cans to get out there and voice your opinions on such a grand scale. I can only hope that our collective voices are loud and focused enough to be taken seriously.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been going on for a month now and it has found its way to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’ll be covering the protests this morning and I’ll be back this afternoon to report on today’s events. Keep your fingers crossed that I am not poked in the eye by one of the three prongs on a Tea Partiers hat.

As a one-time registered socialist (note that it has been nearly seven years since my name has had a red inked star scribbled next to it), I am all for the collected organization of citizens with the purpose of standing up for their constitutional beliefs, whether it bubbles up from a well of laws they disagree with or from that of a socio-emotional stance – as long as its means are compassionate and peaceful. As a matter of fact, even as a liberal, I beamed a bit with American self-indulgence as I watched the Tea Partiers march in Washington toting signs that clearly established their distaste for an Obama Whitehouse (albeit I completely disagreed with their message and their uncompassionate means – I do not care what your political affiliations may whisper to you as you drift off to sleep, people, Barrack Obama is in no way comparable to Adolf Hitler), which may sound outrageous and could possibly put me at risk of having my Lefty Card swiped from my pocket, I thought to myself, hey, at least they’re organizing, at least they’re doing something – so one can justify my feelings of pride when the left began their weeks long protesting of our financial institutions and their practice of systematically eradicating households below the one million dollar mark.

I was planning on handling the Occupy Santa Fe protest in the same fashion I handle most political demonstrations, by not participating. But it was not until I watched Anne Coulter spew her typical fire-poker dialogue on Fox News earlier this week that I decided to get involved here in our own town. Ms. Coulter found it necessary to say that the Occupy Wall Street movement was “just how, with a few slight differences, the Nazi Party organized.” Ms. Coulter also found it necessary to not define these “few slight differences” in her diatribe to the audience of the most watched news network in the United States. The Nazi Party? Really? I have become quite adept at ignoring most everything that comes out of Anne Coulter’s mouth, and that of the rest of the Fox News Team, but this was a bit too outrageous for me to say nothing. Let me explain how the Occupy Wall Street Movement has nothing to do with the Nazi movement. For the sake of time, and our readers’ intelligence, I will not be explaining the bullet points of the Nazi Party manifesto, but rather pointing out why these protestors are upset, and exactly what it is they are speaking out against:

The American Financial Crisis starting kicking our ass in early spring of 2008. Subprime mortgages began going under faster than we could handle, and then Bear Stearns, one of the largest financial institutions in the world, failed in March of 2008. Lehman Brothers, a bank of the same breed followed suit in September. The US Government came up with a fairly simple plan they named TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) in October of 08 and gave nine of the largest banks $125 billion dollars (that’s billion) with the purpose of getting our big banks back on track so they could start lending money again to the real majority of the American population: the middle class – the end game being that the mind-numbingly large banks we gave money to (remember, this came out of our taxes) would pay us back once everything was back to Clinton-era normalcy. But, as most people saw at the time, giving banks this money did nothing to address the actual problem with our financial system, it just bought the banks some extra time; basically postponing what would eventually happen; what IS happening now. Imagine the banking structure of the US as a large ocean liner with a ton of holes in it that is making the ship sink very slowly – TARP plugged those holes and now the ship is sinking again, only this time faster.

TARP wasn’t enough for Bank of America, and in 2009 they finagled another $20 billion out of the government; money they used to set aside for colossal bonuses they could give their top execs, a very perplexing point that the government and the media quickly brushed past. By spring of 2009, the US Government announced that more than half of the nation’s largest banks had enough capital to survive another recession; they even had enough to survive a Doomsday scenario, the worst possible economic slip. Bank stocks took off again, and within a couple months the bailed out banks started repaying their TARP money. Believe it or not the banks actually wanted to get rid of that money – hanging on to that kind of cash was seen as a sort of scarlet letter, a black cloud, giving the banks that retained the money a sort of a pariah position. Banks began to profit again. Goldman Sachs made a profit of $13 billion in 09, up from a mere $1.5 billion just a year earlier. This rise in their bottom lines gave the banks the ability to pay the government back, but some say they paid it back too soon. Much of the banks new money they documented in 2009 and 2010 were through earnings and stock prices and they used these numbers to make their capital look lucrative. Great right!? Not so much. The problem here is that the banks made all their money back and were boasting ridiculous gains without lending money to us – which was the whole point of taking the TARP money in the first place. The banks were paying themselves in order to manage their own stock. In simple terms – that is not real business. They were not making money through lending to American citizens, so when the money ran out, which it did, the banks were right back where they started because there were not receiving any money from loan payments. Their profits, in a sense, were false.

Now, financial jargon aside, why does this suck? In 2008, before the top five banks were bailed out, their total executive compensation was $96 billion dollars (hard to believe as it is, that’s normal). What sucks: In 2010, it was $130 billion. The financial crisis continues and depending on who you ask (myself included) it is getting worse, so if the banks are in as much trouble as they were three years ago, how come their profits are nearly doubled? Because they are not lending money to Americans and they continue to fire their employees by the boat load. Last month Bank of America laid off 30,000 employees. But hey, Ken Lewis, BofA’s CEO made $100 million dollars this year. Him. Just him.

There has always been economic disparity between the top 1% of the American population and the rest of us, but now, during a time of bleak financial crisis, and after the banks that caused it received billions of dollars to fix their mistakes, the gap is bigger than ever before and it is the leaders of these institutions that tell us straight-faced that it is our problem and maybe we’re just not working hard enough, and this is why so many Americans are flocking to their states capitals and financial districts to let them know that they are not okay with this any longer and that they will no longer accept it. I encourage you all, as always, to check my facts, but I think it goes without saying that this movement is more than slightly different than the organization of the Nazi Party.

WHAT: Occupy Santa Fe
WHERE: Roundhouse Capital Building – Downtown Santa Fe
TIME: 9am
WHY: Because the Über -rich and phasing out the rest of us so they can buy a yacht and a fourth home.

Hey Lowbrows – check out my first published article on Vic Romero’s Santa Fe VIP – thanks for the support!

http://www.thesantafevip.com/vipnews/wheres-the-beneficence-been/

You know we’re almost always joking around here at the Lowbrow Sophisticate – but I would like to take a break from the usual silliness to announce the West Memphis Three are free after 18 years. If you have never seen the documentaries of Paradise Lost, you should rent them right now.

Three young men: Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin were imprisoned for the murder and mutilation of three local young boys in Memphis. The mutilation of the third sparked rumours of Satanic Rituals and the only three “weirdos” in town were Misskelley, Echols and Baldwin. And by weirdos, I mean they liked Metallica and wore gothic clothing. That’s it. And just because these young men wore black and liked Metal, a jury of their peers found them guilty of the horrific murders – murders that they had virtually no physical tie to whatsoever. One of the accused was developmentally and cognitively disabled and confessed to the murder after hours of physical and mental abuse by interrogators who knew they could strong arm the young man with a third grade comprehension level to confess to murders he never committed, let alone understood the ramifications of doing so.

The band Metallica which the three accused loved so much, even allowed their music to be used in the documentary free of charge – a lofty gesture considering how much the band detests whenever their music is listened to with no monetary gains. They believed in these young men’s innocence that much.

Rarely is justice served in this country of ours, and it gives me great hope to see these men released.

To The Memphis Three! May you find your way back.

Vic Romero met with Joe Ray Sandoval thirty minutes before I arrived at Rize Nightclub in Santa Fe, New Mexico to interview the nationally renowned Spoken Word artist, poet, and writer. Vic was nice enough to cover Sandoval’s childhood and young adult life up until he headed to Virginia for his Graduate Degree in creative writing. Here is a rundown on what the two of them covered:

While in Catholic school, Joe Ray thought of Santa Fe as a huge influence in the arts, worldwide. He thoroughly enjoyed the Pasatiempo and one day longed to be featured within its pages. At eighteen years old, Joe Ray fell into writing. Joe Ray started college at New Mexico State University with the intention of becoming an electrical engineer; that was before he started open poetry mics in his college-apartment’s living room. Eventually, Rock Island, a bar in Las Cruces, New Mexico, gave Joe Ray a back room as a place to have his open mics, and it was here where Spoken Word was born.

Joe Ray moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, after finishing his bachelors at NMSU. Shortly after, a friend of his killed himself, and the reality of the situation fueled Joe Ray’s life of excess through the 90’s. Then, when Joe Ray was in his early twenties, everything changed.

DRM: Alright, Thanks again for meeting with me, Joe. I know Vic gotcha up until then, so, you got your MFA at George Mason.

JRS: Yeah.

DRM: What was that experience like? When you went into George Mason, what was your intent when you arrived? Was it to study writing? Creative Writing and Poetry?

JRS: Yeah.

DRM: That’s what you went in for. Did you have a Bachelor’s before that?

JRS: I got my Bachelor’s from New Mexico State.

DRM: Was your Bachelors in writing?

JRS: Creating Writing

DRM: Was there anyone at Mason that really influenced you, or put you on the track that you are on now? Or was it just –

JRS: I started on the track I’m on now in undergraduate. This guy named Joe Smozal; he turned me on to the whole Spoken Word scene. That’s what got me into the whole performance aspect of poetry. And then when I got – I wanted to get as far away from here as possible. I love Santa Fe and all, but… So I went to a top twenty writing school, studied with Kevin Forshay who was probably the biggest influence as far as the actual academics – part of the reason I went to George Mason –

DRM: Forshay was at Virginia?

JRS: Yeah, and C.K. Williams was the other guy, but I wanted to get a straight up, legitimate Masters Degree, so I went to a really hard, academic school, so that way, when I did what I liked to do, the performance aspect of it – there’s a big debate, whether there was room in poetry for the Spoken Word people, you know, “this is boring” and it kind of was – the writing was great, but the performance aspect had such a rush. A larger audience and it was so much more entertaining and the biggest influence were the people I was studying with and writing with, and uh, they were all decent, well known writers – they were all actually really good writers

DRM: So it was your fellow matriculates, they were the –

JRS: Well, yeah. They were the influence and we’d push each other to write, you know, it was crazy, we would go on tour, you know I worked for DC WritersCorps, and uh, with DC WritersCorps it was –

DRM: Was that during your time at George Mason?

JRS: Yeah, during that time – it was government funded, like AmeriCorps, but for writers. So we went in and taught writing to all these different communities, so there were twenty writers, three cities: San Francisco, Brooklyn, and DC, and I was the only Brown dude, so I we would see Latino kids, and Guatemalans, Dominicans, and working with those kids taught me a lot. Working with the other writers taught me a lot, and we were on tour, there were three of us. There was DJ Renegade, this big giant black dude, Jeff McDaniel was the crazy white guy and I was the Brown guy. And we got hired, so we would go up and down the coast and do performances –

D: And this was all the while you were going to school.

JRS: All while I was in school. And it was just great. And Virginia is such a white state, and it was something that I never experienced, it was the first time I ever saw a black dude speak Spanish – it was a living experience, and more than just graduate school, that was the vehicle to get out there and to learn all this stuff and to go do it.

DRM: And you said, using your words, you were the only “Brown” guy around – were you the only “Brown” guy in the whole program?

JRS: Oh yeah. In the program, in WritersCorps.

DRM: That’s crazy. We’re you received well? Did you experience much resistance from the others?

JRS: No. I was an enigma to them as much as they were to me. I mean, I was from New Mexico, which is the Wild Wild West on the East Coast, you know what I mean?

DRM: Absolutely. I’m from Minnesota; I hear the same shit there.

JRS: So they had no idea – but they were fascinated, I was fascinated. I remember the first time, there was this girl Carmen Johnson, she had dreads and I asked her point blank, ‘can I touch your hair?’ I mean, I didn’t know, you just didn’t know. Santa Fe was a much smaller town back then.

DRM: And how old were you when you were in WritersCorps at George Mason?

JRS: I started when I was 23, 24.

DRM: It sounds like you’re saying the experience of the program was the catalyst for you. The environment you were in.

JRS: Yeah, then Forshay, recommended me to the hilt, “we want you to come do this program” and like I said, I met all these different writers and we helped each other and we pushed each other. It was an awesome community. And it probably was one of the most fun times of my life. I was around people that were motivated to do something all the time.

D: You mentioned you were getting hired and that you were on the road. Can you explain that a bit? Were you just being – did you have to seek out these gigs?

JRS: They started coming to us. They heard about us.

DRM: How’d they hear about you?

JRS: We just got a lot of press. We were the group that went into the Martin Luther King Library and we were doing all this great work with kids.

DRM: So when you were touring on the East Coast, then, you were doing DC.

JRS: Atlanta

DRM: Manhattan, Brooklyn.

JRS: Yeah, we were all over New York.

DRM: And you were still in your writing program while this was going on?

JRS: Yeah.

DRM: That’s amazing to have that level of exposure while you’re still getting your degree.

JRS: Absolutely.

DRM: That’s nearly unheard of.

JRS: By the time I left George Mason, I had already; I was connected around the country. We’re not that big of a community, you know. Its growing and it’s still super strong. We just saw on HBO, they’re doing this “Brave New Voices” it’s this poetry slam, youth poetry slam that they do in San Francisco, actually they do different places too. I took a team from Santa Fe, because when I came back, I brought all this experience back with me, and the thought was leaving Santa Fe was always such a big important part for anyone that wanted to make it and be successful, because you had to get the fuck out of this town, otherwise you weren’t taken seriously. I can tell you right now that is false.

DRM: Really?

JRS: Yeah, it’s good, and you need to get out and go experience, but living here and doing your work here, isn’t a failure. I’ve done more stuff in Santa Fe, and Santa Fe has always managed to keep me here and has fed my art and my creativity and brought me opportunities that I might not have gotten had I lived in other cities. I don’t know what would happen. I can’t second guess. What if I had gone to Columbia instead of George Mason like my friend did? What if I had not left minor league baseball? It all could have led to different paths, there’s no point in second guessing, my point is that coming back here is just – I feel like I’m me here. So I brought all that experience working with city kids and I started workshops in Santa Fe, and have been doing it for years and years. These kids appreciate it because they can look at me and say, ‘hey, that guy looks like me,’ with the brown skin, and we all have the same experience because we grow up here. People would always ask me, “What’s your nationality?” “Where are you from?” And I always tell them “I’m New Mexican.” It’s very unique. Spanish, Native American, White folks forever, since we started as a state and the influence is great, all of us growing up together with all these different types of people. We have the Moors, the French traders… when I left Santa Fe, I was telling Vic that I was pretty hip on how the world worked.

DRM Do you think it helps, working with youths now, that they see you as someone who was here, left, and then came back?

JRS: Yes, because they can believe it.

DRM: Do you think that discourages them from leaving?

JRS: No. I tell them, take the situation to leave and then you can come back. You can do whatever is important to you. As long as you’re doing it, it doesn’t matter where you are. That’s up to you.

DRM: I think a lot of people have the mentality that you gotta get out of the town you grew up in otherwise you’re never going to experience anything.

JRS: But that happens.

DRM: So you encourage your kids to go.

JRS: Absolutely. I encourage everybody to go. Go see what else is out there. Coming back is not the bad thing, that’s where shit gets confused.

DRM: Right, it’s seen as failure.

JRS: Right, because they came back. Every time that I came back: Documentaries, then all the spoken word stuff, the movie and all that shit came out. The CDs came even before the documentary, because it was ripe. There were all kinds of talent here – all these kids that I was working with – and we just started doing shit. And it led to where I am now, and each project was bigger and better than the last. Which is scary now, you know, cause what’s next? How do I keep progressing? The movie we just made was four million dollars, but they stretched every penny – we had a wonderful cast.

DRM: An amazing cast.

JRS: The producers and the director are all well known. Victor Nunez is like an independent film hero.

DRM: He’s remarkable – Ulee’s Gold.

JRS: Exactly.

DRM: Well I find it interesting what you say about leaving and coming back.

JRS: Right. I mean, my girlfriend loves it here, she went to Miami, did her college, moved to New York, hated it, she’s happy right here, she doesn’t want to go anywhere else. And that’s cool with me. I’ve made my peace with this town. We’re cool. Me and this town are cool.

DRM: You guys fought it out and moved on.

JRS: Right. We duked it out and decided that we love each other. Don’t get me wrong, I mean if someone were to call me up and say, “Joe Ray we like your new project, we want you to be the staff writer for it, want you to write your own show, you need to move to L.A.” I’m not gonna say no.

DRM: [Laugh]. You’re like an amicable divorced couple. So this is leading into the movie, Spoken Word, which I saw the premier of and I was here the night of The Lensic, I thought it was great – I’ve seen it twice. As you know, I’m a writer and growing up in Minnesota, then Wisconsin, and even in Chicago, I did not have much exposure to Spoken Word at all, and when I moved back here is when I started hearing a lot of Spoken Word and to be honest, in my mind it was the “Chess Club” of literature, this small, compact group of drama dorks, then I saw the movie and I was blown away. I didn’t know who you were and I saw this facet of literature that I knew existed but I brushed off, shit on, spoke badly about, and to see it done so well, and beautifully, it really opened my mind up to it. And I’ve been helping Vic out with Spoken Word, in very small dosages, up at El Farol, and when you see something like this with people that are really good at it, and there are shitty writers too that do it, but my initial reaction was based on a lack of intelligence, and to see what people can bring to these events is wonderful. My long-winded point being, where you doing this before you knew it existed – you were doing Spoken Word at undergrad and suddenly were like, “Wow, there’s this group of people that are doing this,” or, were you introduced to it and realized that this was inside of you.

JRS: I was introduced to it. I was already writing at the time of course, but you have to remember something else too, oral tradition predates writing, and what I argued when I was in graduate school for my thesis, they wanted, you know, thirty writers, and I said, well, one of my ‘writers’ is stories that have no writers attached to it because these are stories passed on generation to generation. Even sitting around the dinner table in this culture was a huge important thing, dinner being three hours long, four hours long because youre sitting there telling stories, your sharing and laughing and it was an important time for the family, and I just took that to another level, and I shared it. The thing that I love about Spoken Word versus the written word is that when you write, you can write it, put your name on it, send it off and you don’t have to be accountable for it, but when you’re up there on stage, people can boo you, people can tell you you’re a fucking asshole, or a liar – there’s a physical relationship. Ethride Knight said when you speak, your voice vibrates and hits the bones in the ear and that’s how sound works and there is an actual physical connection that takes place. And that, when you put it that way, there is a connection between you and your audience. You’re accountable for what you say – and that’s the positive too, when you hear a crowd erupt because of what you’re saying or when they moan, you know they’re getting it and hearing every word, it’s an amazing feeling.

DRM: What about when you hear silence?

JRS: The respect of silence.

DRM: Having done standup, it almost sounds like it’s easier to get someone to laugh than it is to respect your poetry.

JRS: Well, for me, poetry is a lot of personal shit.

DRM: When you go up there… it’s not written? You’re going up there. I’ve seen so many people do Spoken Word with nothing in front of them. Do you find yourself improvising on your sets?

JRS: Yeah, you have to.

DRM: Gauging the crowd?

JRS: I’m from the older school. I started off writing with a pen and paper, and more times than not if you see me on stage I’ll have a stand and my work. I could memorize it I guess, maybe I’m just lazy. There’s something about reading it, the presentation… for me it’s about the in-between. The kids now, no way. You don’t have paper, you learn it and it this shit and that. For me it’s not imperative to not have paper. The performance is inflection and how you present the material and how you interact with the people. Just because it’s written down, doesn’t mean I can’t change shit in the middle. I’ll switch order and the way that I write, I can put pieces together in all kinds of different ways. It depends on the audience – if it’s a bunch of young people you can’t do some of the hardcore shit, and if it’s an older audience, you can be more appreciative.

DRM: And you do all of that on the fly?

JRS: I’ll decide. I want this here, put it together and prepare each one for a particular audience.

D: I like that, Nabokov wrote on note cards and he would move the cards around to tell his story, the story always having the same message, regardless of the order.

JRS: [laughs] Everybody has a different way of seeing things. There’s people that go onstage and hammer it home, and I’m like, hey, there’s little kids here, you can’t be ‘fuck, shit, fuck, shit.’ Don’t shit where you eat. It’s a fucking business. I would never shit on anyone just to be seen as punk rock or avant-garde. There is a time and place for it. Don’t get me wrong – when George Bush got elected the second time I was in DC reading and I went to town and boy did those fucking people love it. They were like, “Fuck Yes!”

DRM: Would you say a lot of your work is political?

JRS: It’s political, it’s functional, the fact that any minority, any disenfranchised group that writes or performs and puts their work out there, is political. You’re giving a voice to the voiceless. Even my girlfriend wanted to know some Chicano movies to watch, she’s researching roles, she’s getting a lot of Chicano roles, and you know what, there’s not a whole lot. We got Edward James Almost, ya know.

Joe Ray had to go move his car so a nameless woman could leave the club. The interview picks up after this – discussing Joe Ray’s critically acclaimed film named after the very performance literature he is so married to.

DRM: You co-wrote Spoken Word with William Conway, correct?

JRS: Yes.

DRM: Was Spoken Word your idea or his?

JRS: Here’s how this played out: Several years ago, Bill Conway’s kid graduated from high school, form Prep, that year Santa Fe Prep had asked me to give their commencement speech. So I did the commencement speech for his son’s class and that’s where we kind of first crossed paths. He started a film company here in town, Luminaria Films, and he talked to our friend Rob Wilder, he teaches at Prep, so they hooked us up, and so they asked me to go in for a meeting and I didn’t really know for what or why, so I walked in and I said, so I heard you guys are making movies, and I pitched my story, and I had some poems in my hand, and I pitched the story about this writer who lives in San Francisco, working with youth, he comes back, you know, we had to come up with a gimmick for why he came back, which was the dying father, because you know, what they wanted to do was make New Mexico stories. One of the biggest kicks I have had as an adult was reading with Joe Hayes from Taos, the story teller! He was just this great story teller and we all knew him and stuff, and it was kind of a big deal. I remember hearing his stories, and now we’re telling our stories – there’s a line in the movie that says, “We need to tell people about our history even as we’re making it.” Spoken Word is now a piece of New Mexico that can never be taken away. It is a documentation of this part of life, this frame in time, one of family dynamic, one of culture. I went to New York once to do a reading and it was in front of six hundred people, sold out venue in Spanish Harlem. They watched the movie and we did a Q&A after, and it was amazing how these people related to the movie, being from a completely different part of the country, all the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, which was Spanish Harlem, but they related to the family dynamic, the father/son relationship, the brother/brother relationship and that’s what I took away as much as anything else even thought this story was told in a very specific place. It’s a universal story.

DRM: It resonates.

JRS: Exactly. It’s not just Latino culture. White folks in Ohio like it.

[Vic Romero interjects a helpful piece of relation]

VR: I think too, especially with the relationship where they get it, is when they tap into that whole old school idea of your dad never talks to you, it’s just “Get your shit done,” “Get your ass up” and the son says, “Dad I want to ask you something” and the dad says “Don’t be so fucking stupid.” I think a lot of us, sons of fathers, can relate to that.

JRS: Yeah.

DRM: It is all relative. Even though this story could be in any place, what I find fascinating is, as I watched it, I remember thinking, this is the well of this cultural information, and even though it could take place anywhere, I could not think of a better environment for this to come from – especially because it is so foreign to most people. This is silly as hell, but even with my wife, Denise, she’s from Illinois, and after she moved here, I swear to God, half of the people she knew didn’t even know it was a state. They thought she was moving to Mexico the country.

JRS: Same with people in Virginia. “You speak really good English,” I got that all the time. I’m like… are you kidding me, I live in fucking New Mexico. This is third grade shit! How do you not know this? Come on!

DRM: I know you got to get going, so I’ll move this right along. Do you still speak with Conway?

JRS: Oh yeah!

DRM: You guys are buddies?

JRS: He’s got other projects going on, but let me tell you one thing about Bill Conway and Karen Koch (she was the other producer). She worked on some of the best movies ever, like Dead Man with Johnny Depp, Drugstore Cowboy, and I will tell you that the people that worked on this movie were adamant about keeping it true and New Mexico and not dumbing it down, and not sugar coating it. I appreciate them so much for that, more than I can tell you. In fact, my dad became a consultant on the movie when it came to the funeral scene because they wanted to do it in English. They didn’t believe that they would do it in Spanish.

DRM: And where was that scene?

JRS: In Chimayo, across the street from the Santuario. You know, they just didn’t understand that they would do this in Spanish for real. So they kept it authentic, and that’s a huge testament to a group of producers that were willing to keep it authentic.

DRM: That’s great – not your typical Hollywood shit.

JRS: Right, not your typical Hollywood shit. They kept it New Mexico. I am honestly proud of how this came out. I’m proud to be a part of it. I’m proud to have worked with the people I worked with.

DRM: What I loved was even the most detrimental of places in the movie were still so beautiful. The most depressed areas are so lovely.

JRS: Chimayo has been written up in the New York Times, several times as the heroin capital of the country, and you know part of the deal was we wanted to show the beauty and desperation that comes out of here, and there is a lot of both. There are things that belong. And you know, I thought my first movie was going to be this super hip, fast, bang, hip hop soundtrack, hot chicks and a lot of fucking, and ironically the opening scene, the beginning, Cruz is this rock star and when we first see him he’s banging these two chicks in a hotel room, you know what I mean, and then we anteed up. We had to find out, ‘what is this about?’ and it’s about the family dynamic. It’s about the relationships within families. And it’s a slow movie, and a lot of people didn’t realize how big a production this was, which goes back to the narrative of going home; whether you’re going back home to Ohio, or Minnesota or Iowa or wherever. And then being from New Mexico, I had so many people tell me how impressed they were with the quality – this is a real full-on movie, and there are so many that aren’t and again, this idea of how can that be in New Mexico? There’s Thor and Transformers and all this other shit, and I think [Martinez] is finally coming around, giving a little more love to it. My next project I want to do it in New Mexico, I want to film in New Mexico again.

DRM: How did Nunez get involved? Did you seek him out?

JRS: He and Karen were close, ultimately what got Sandoval and Blades and Victor Nunez involved is that they dug the script.

DRM: How was co-writing it with Conway? Easy?

JRS: Awesome. It’s essentially an auto, and we don’t say that, we say that it’s based on a true story, based on my poetry, but my poetry is all about me. I don’t know what else to write about!

[Vic, Joe Ray, and myself all laugh]

JRS: But the movie is not about me. It’s about families and relationships. It’s so much bigger than me. It’s so important to me that these stories come out. I’m happy that it’s out there and I’m happy that people went out and saw it. When we did it at the Lensic, that’s the most special show I’ve ever had because when I saw all these guys in the audience, and I heard crying and hollering in the audience, I get goose bumps thinking about it right now. I saw my name like that on screen… I started crying. This movie is about them.

DRM: That’s really cool, Joe. More humility than I was expecting.

JRS: It’s about all of us. What changed my life were the kids. We were working with this gang prevention program, and all this shit, and all these bangers, and I would see them selling crack in the junior high parking lot, you know, and there are a number of them that are dead. And when I was there, one of the kids got shot in a drive by, was killed, and one of my students was pregnant with his baby and their kids who should just be dealing with high school shit, and you know what man, instead of all these guys gunning up and going looking for revenge, we had a make-shift service in the Latin American Community Center, and all these kids got up and they read their pieces they wrote for this dude.

DRM: That’s incredible.

JRS: That’s what did it. That kind of power that art has and how much it can help young people… the fact that were even discussing cutting education and art programs is beyond me – we’re going the wrong fucking way, if you want to stop these problems and all the drug problems and alcohol – don’t forget, we live in Santa Fe and we’re in this weird oasis in the second poorest state in the nation, what goes on here doesn’t really go on anywhere else, but we don’t want to nurture the arts. We’re the second largest art market in the goddamn country; there should be no reason that any kid that wants to in the state of New Mexico should have access to the arts. I’ll tell you right now, if we allow this, all of these kids will go on to do bigger and better things. I’ve never told one of my students, you should be a poet, no, I tell them they need to express themselves in any way that is important to them, whether its music, making beats, art, drawing, freestyle, beat boxing, painting, I don’t give a fuck what it is that you choose, dance, theater, express yourself, create it for yourself. I tell these kids as soon as you put something on paper and as soon as you present it to the world, it’s out there, it’s now tangible. When you walk in all pissed off, fuck you! Fuck life! That doesn’t help, but when you express yourself in an honest way then people will listen to you and they have to pay attention and they can’t ignore you anymore. You’re not just telling people to fuck off, you’ve explained why you’re pissed off and you have a right to be pissed off.

DRM: One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when you’re in San Francisco, in the classroom, it’s very short, after you get the call announcing your father’s death, and you have to go back. And it really shows your connection to the kids. After the movie, I read that your first Poetry Allowed, 900 kids showed up? I forget the name of the place – I thought I would have remembered it, I should have written it down.

[Silence for a minute]

JRS: You know what, I did a – me and Rockwell did a performance, this Spoken Word performance. It was at Sweeney.

DRM: Yeah! Sweeney, that’s it!

JRS: Nine hundred grade school kids. I kid you not. And Julia Goldberg and all them showed up.

DRM: What was it like to show up and see nine hundred people in the audience?

JRS: IT WAS INSANE! INSANE! I’m thinking to myself, ‘holy shit.’ So I knew already what set I had to do. It was a bunch of schools, you know.

DRM: Did that throw you off?

JRS: Oh, yeah, I thought it was going to be in this classroom. It was nine hundred kids and it was awesome.

DRM: What was the event?

JRS: They just asked us to come so all these young people could see your performance and your art. I did Spoken Word, and what I did a long time ago, is I brought in a DJ, me and my DJ, he would throw down beats so that way, because when people think of poetry, its old white dudes with pipes, it’s boring.

DRM: They think of Walt Whitman.

JRS: Right, who was badass! He was a gangster when it comes down to it, he was all about fucking and hanging out and partying. He’s always writing about having a good ol’ time, this dude is gangster. And so, when I reintroduced the DJ aspect to it, people immediately changed their tastes, I mean, one of the first times when I brought it back, we dropped a Dr. Dre beat, and I’m busting out original Spoken Word over Dr. Dre beats. Like when I did the commencement speech, it was Nothin But a G Thang and shit like that, and I’m quoting [J. Christian Averte] and Robert Frost, because that’s how you – that’s the end road for me, that was how I reach these kids. I start with a simple story. You know, and when I was a kid, I was out there and I had a bb gun and we’d go out there and shoot shit, that’s what kids did was shoot things. One day I’m cruising around and I see this rabbit, and I was like, I’m gonna shoot that rabbit, I got a gun, so I shot this rabbit and I hit it and its back legs quit working and it was paddling like hell to get away from me, and I’m like, what do I do now:

I grabbed my gun
I pumped ten times and I pulled the trigger
I pumped ten times and I pulled the trigger
Pump ten times and I pulled the trigger
Pump ten times and I pulled the trigger
I pump ten times and I pulled the trigger
And it still wouldn’t die.

So I grabber a large rock and bashed its head in
Over, and over, and over until it no longer moves

My words won’t bring the rabbit back
And my words won’t let me forget

JRS: And then it becomes poetry. If you look up the word poetry, it is the maker of things. I argue that a good mechanic is a poet, or a plumber. There’s poetry in art, there’s poetry in theater, there’s poetry in music. All advertising is poetry, in the news – the blizzard of ’96. You’re using all these words and onomatopoeia. It’s all poetry. It’s everywhere. So why is it not a viable art form?

DRM: Coming from Joe Ray Sandoval, I want to know, is there a dichotomy between hip hop and poetry?

JRS: There is not at all.

DRM: So it’s the same?

JRS: It’s not the same. There are very poetic hip hop artists, but not all hip hop is poetry. Poetry is a forced language form and every word is important, there’s a lot of stupid shit out there, and it works for a mainstream audience, a larger audience. But it doesn’t mean you can’t have educated rhymes. People say Tupac was a poet and to some degree I think he was, and people say Bob Dylan is a poet, and there is a lot of it that is. Poetry is a high art form. If you listen to Emmerson and Therault, who came after Whitman, they see a poet as the lens between God and the People. But I don’t think about all that shit. I think of a poet as a vehicle for storytelling and for sharing the beauty of the world and the harshness of life. I’m proud to be a poet, and it’s not what you want to tell your Hispanic father, “Hey, Daddy I’m a poet.” It’s one step up from being a gay guy, you know what I mean?

[Vic interjects: “Hey!”]

JRS: No, you know, in the culture, you know?

Vic: No, you’re right.

DRM: Can you tell me about Chicanobuilt? I don’t even really know what it is.

JRS: It’s expressing modern Chicano culture through film, poetry, art, and clothing. We started making t-shirts just to celebrate more of Chicano culture. It’s saying we are Chicano built and we’re proud of it.

DRM: Where could someone that wanted to get these items, find them?

JRS: My Facebook page. Chicanobuilt Sandoval. I’m also opening Chicanobuilt.com again. I bought it – finally bought it back, and now I’m reopening it.

DRM: So this is something that means a lot to you?

JRS: Hell yeah. One thing you know about Chicano people and New Mexicans is that we’re a proud bunch of people, man. You’ll see 505 everywhere and guess what, we got Chicanobuilt now.

DRM: That leads into my last question: Being here for seven years, a Polish white guy from Minnesota, I’ve seen more Santa Fe Pride than any other city, and I’ve been all over this country. There’s so much pride here, and I wanted to ask you Joe, what’s the difference between Santa Fe Pride and Chicano Nationalism?

JRS: Good question. Chicano, part of it is its place, but the part about Santa Fe Pride, more so, is its New Mexico Pride.

DRM: So it’s more New Mexico Pride than Santa Fe Pride?

JRS: That’s right, because Santa Fe is an enigma in this state; it’s like Austin in Texas.

DRM: Yeah, it’s funny. When I go to Albuquerque, a lot of the people there shit on Santa Fe.

JRS: Yeah, they hate Santa Fe. It’s arty-farty, and it’s gay, and its fancy restaurants. I play poker and a King Trey, King Three – it’s a Santa Fe waiter. Pair of Kings they call a Santa Fe couple; it’s all Santa Fe jokes. And a lot if it is ignorance and it’s unfortunate, that the rest of the state doesn’t embrace it. But you know, so many Hispanics are Republican; they’re Catholic, why do think we have so many goddamn kids? No birth control, no abortions, none of that shit. I’m forty one years old, I’ve never been married and I have no children – do you know how rare that is here?

DRM: So you’re saying that Chicano Nationalism is something that exists within the state of New Mexico and within the New Mexico Pride and that here they are not separate?

JRS: Absolutely. Being in New Mexico is a part of being Chicano and that’s part of being Spanish and there are all kinds of different schools. My grandmother is Spanish, Spain. Period. Which is not Chicano! Chicano is Mexican descent, natives, and I find it hard, that’s why I say New Mexico because we are all here. All that influence is here. I know so many Hispanics that dump on Mexicans, all the time. It sucks.

DRM: Real quick, and I’ll let you go. Are you working on anything right now – any upcoming projects?

[Vic: Ask him about his award. He’s getting nominated for some awards.]

DRM: Great. What’s that all about?

JRS: Spoken Word has four nominations for the Imagen Awards – it’s sort of like the Latin Image Awards.

DRM: Where’s that at?

JRS: In L.A. Beverly Hills Hilton – black tie event. We have four nominations.

DRM: That’s excellent. What’s it being nominated for?

JRS: Rubén [Blades] and Kuno [Becker] are being nominated for best actor, Miguel Sandoval is nominated for Best Supporting and Spoken Word got nominated for Best Picture.

D: Really? Nice! Congratulations! Good luck, Joe. It’s been really great speaking with you. I was coming in here expecting some slippery “cool guy” arrogant poet and you’ve been humble, educational and quite interesting. Thank you so much for your time and your words.

JRS: Hey, I’ve been a prick in my life. But I’m proud of who I am and I quit drinking’ a couple of years ago and now, I’m chill and mellow and just enjoying my life.