Ana Castillo – Anarres Project for Alternative Futures

The Era of Unbridled Cynicism: #Himtoo Movement Backlash

By Ana Castillo (October 15, 2018)

When catastrophic natural disasters devastate towns and islands & the president doesn’t bother to make an appearance with sincere condolences, instead chooses to attend campaign fund raisers and nationalist rallies, continues to mock minorities, the disabled and disenfranchised, routinely lies, dismisses abused women, and ignores the suffering of children, who practices nepotism, racism, misogyny, protects the wealthy and praises despots: and we tolerate it? We are a lost nation.

In this era, anyone who rises without any intention of acting upon (besides complaints on social media/forwarding fake chains and links, etc.) you must surely check your cynicism gauge. You may be lost, too.

Trump’s Four Immigration Pillars

By Ana Castillo (June 21, 2018)

THE 4 PILLARS HE DEMANDS BE MET; Let’s examine the hypocrisy, the fallacy of his proposed sincere desire to resolve, and the reality that makes it impossible for Congress to vaguely go along with HIS demands.

1. He HAS AND IS deporting Dreamers.

2. Demands $25 billion dollars for the WALL. It is no solution to keeping out unwanted immigration or drugs.

3. End to Lottery. (Read from remarks he has made: Let’s just let White and highly educated people here.) Never mind we have countless of U.S. college educated here now who are underemployed or unemployed.

This country was built on, and is currently functioning, to make life comfortable for some, and very comfortable for the few, because of basic skilled labor. Here is a recommended message to your base who lost coal mining jobs, or are waiting for the manufacturing jobs that the likes of your family have given to people in countries like Mexico and China, (where there are no unions or safety regulations or child labor laws to protect them):

“Go out and work the fields. Bus tables. Mow lawns, nanny children, stand on the corner for ten hours with a cart and sell corn on the cob or peddle a cart in parks. Change linen in hotels or work in steaming laundries.”

Tell your supporters jobs eagerly await when you bring back your own companies from countries where you pay an individual $2.00 a day and that will hire your loyal base here at minimum wage.

4. End ‘chain migration.’ His wife is an immigrant and her parents were recently brought here as a result. Start at home, Sir, with your policies.

Trump Warns Puerto Ricans that Colonialism Will Continue

By Ana Castillo (October 3, 2017)

“We will not rest, however, until the people of Puerto Rico are safe. …and we will be there every day until that happens,” he said.

A few days later, the Narcissist blasted:

“… Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.”

Then he went to spend the weekend golfing at one of his resorts.

Also from him:

“We’re literally starting from scratch. Ultimately, the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort — will end up being one of the biggest ever — will be funded and organized, and what we will do with the tremendous amount of existing debt already on the island,” he said.

As the heir and benefactor of colonizers who have not only exploited North and South America and the Caribbean but general populations throughout the world, he reminds the Puerto Rican people that they will have to repay any rebuilding (a catastrophe arguably resulting from corporate exploitative abuse of the environment) on top of their federal debt.

It isn’t an expectation more than it is a degrading warning that Puerto Rican people have less expectation today than ever of gaining the right to self-determination.

Education No Longer the Sure Way in Our Reality

By Ana Castillo (August 4, 2017)

XICANISMA 2017

Sadly, I know of whence she speaks. It is a reality in this country that defies the belief that education is a sure way for all to climb up the economic ladder.

Instead, college grads are in debt, taking on jobs not related to their fields in order to make ends meet, must take more than one job to do so, relocating and leaving supportive communities not for a professional position but to try to put a sustainable life in place, some keep dreaming of start-ups or ‘branding; merchandise with little business savvy and/or little to no collateral or promising business plan.

We look at a world today where millions of human beings are risking their lives immigrating from home to try to survive and help families and are persecuted in every manner by authorities, where babies and children are dying of starvation because the greed of powers that be deny aid, where millions are suffering and dying from treatable diseases for the same reason, and above all, most tragically and shameful, all this should not have been.

With or without substantial income, we may use our learning, our creative minds, our hands joined with hope to continue a resistance of activism and spiritual fortitude. We may do this because there is no other way. No one can stand alone as the vicious agenda of a future dictatorship based on White Supremacy, misogyny and homophobia, xenophobia and further castigation of the growing have-nots grinds forward.

When They Come Knocking On Our Door, Will We Resist?

By Ana Castillo (July 25, 2017)

IN WHICH THE POET PAUSES TO REFLECT (NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND MOST ASSUREDLY, NOT THE LAST) ON THE WHITE SUPREMACIST PROGRAM THAT GOVERNS THE NATION TOWARD ESTABLISHING A TOTALITARIAN POLICE STATE

POC all over the land momentarily held our collective breath when the tragic news resounded that a blond, white woman (and from a white dominated foreign country) was senselessly murdered by a police officer. (Fox news has focused on the officer’s ethnic background, a first generation Somalian.)

On the one hand, we knew, if history taught us anything, that the unprovoked killing of a white woman might be the start of bringing attention to the ongoing murdering of innocent citizens of color. On the other hand, we also knew that this seeking of justice may not necessarily apply to our people.

In the broader spectrum of things, we may be encouraged by the extent of national and international outrage at the policies and actions being implemented by the Bannon-Puppet agenda to emulate the Third Reich handbook in the 21st century. The desire for a complete police state would inevitably effect Whites and it already has. Until then the World, they believed, was theirs and, therefore, protected them and secured their rights, become our allies. As we have learned, that is when previously indifferent individuals retaliate.

Beyond the immediate tragic numbers of random murders of innocent people and children by the police, the broader goal of a police state is to instill fear, numbness, apathy, and resignation so that the day they come knocking on our doors we do not resist.

Trump is No One’s Victim: Why We Need Writers in the Darkest of Times

By Ana Castillo (February 20, 2017)

In Which the Poet, Somewhat Recovered from an Unannounced Televised News Conference that Might Have been a Chapter Titled “WHITE HOUSE VS. THE MAJORITY OF THE MEDIA” in a Dystopian Novel Draft, Reveals Its Narrator’s Internal Monologue For the Random Reader’s Musing:

Republican McCain said it, or at least suggested it: Shutting down the media and installing or legitimizing only State approved media sources is Dictatorship Strategy 101.

From El Id’s alternative facts Spokeswoman’s “Bowling Green Massacre” major faux pas, to his alleged “all the unreported’ terrorist attacks”, to the tweet about a non-existent terrorist attack in Sweden that he misinterpreted from Fox News this past weekend, it would seem the only fake news ‘the people’ are receiving comes from the White House.

Right of the Right Spin Doctor Limbaugh claims his King Tweet has no one but ‘the people’ on his side. Limbuaugh here was referring to what Bannon called the rival “Party,” (no, not the Democrats)– the Media. In fact, El Id has LIMBAUGH. The Talk Radio host has TWENTY MILLION listeners each week (versus the NYT that has approximately 4 million on Sunday.)

El Id has Breitbart, a self-proclaimed white supremacist site. Despite its ‘possibly’ inflated claims (let’s hope) of approx. 240 million worldwide viewers, Breitbart may have approximately as many as twenty million. Its founder, Bannon, as the world knows, is appointed WH Chief Strategist. (You don’t get more official than that. Side note, Bannon’s heroes or at least, whose power he admires are “Satan, Darth Vader, and Chaney.” This is according to Vanity Fair, not yet on the White House Blacklist of Fake News Sources.)

While El Id doesn’t have the popular vote (despite his emphatic alleging of rigged elections where he asserted that the undocumented and dead voted for Clinton in the millions) he is no underdog and nobody’s victim.

He doesn’t have the support of perhaps half “the People” but he does hold untold international power. He has a billionaire and multi-millionaire cabinet that he is building, all with dossiers of private interests and, except for military, next to none in service of ‘the people.’ (Unless, by the people we are now referring to the 1%.) He has his own wealth and, what we may assume, is the unprecedented and unimagined support of worldwide investments. He has their backing and commitment to exploit all human and natural resources for the sake of their personal profit and agenda for power.

And if, in the darkest of times–which this nation has heretofore not seen–the State did successfully shut down the freedom of the press, then, all of those who desired to be writers, whose college degrees did not facilitate their careers to fame, fortune, or even jobs or publications, will be on call to report as witnesses, as the ears and eyes of ‘The People.’ We will require your minds, pens, hearts, and conscience.

We Are Not Extras in a Grade B James Bond Movie

By Ana Castillo (February 14, 2017)

In which the poet intervenes on a day meant for love, if only because she hasn’t lost hope; and some remarks on the latest occurrence in a country suddenly run like a Third World sweatshop, recently appropriated by the spoiled heir of private wealth and ( forgive the cliché reference) cronies.

So the President employed as his National Security Advisor the man who was FIRED as Defense Intelligence Agency DIRECTOR by his predecessor. A) Stupid move, not to mention, dangerous for national security; B) A move that could only be thought as worthwhile by a narcissist sociopath who is hateful and thinks he can manipulate everyone; C) A and B. Also, a move made by a President unconcerned about SECURITY for the country and the world.

Three weeks into the new administration Mike Flynn ‘resigns’ after being busted for putting the nation’s security at risk, disrespecting his superiors (again) and the country’s population, who were his charge, and putting our security at risk.*

(* Side note: Let’s not dismiss the President’s public comment on Fox last week defending Putin’s violation of human rights by stating that this country was also ‘not so innocent.’ It isn’t a far reach to assume that, according to the current head of state, Flynn’s mistake was stepping over his bounds, not delivering a message which had been relayed to him.)

The world population, not only the country’s, is not a hiring pool to pick and choose from, to reward or punish, by the former reality show star, billionaire-businessman-turned leader of the ‘free world’ by mega billionaire interests (let’s not fool ourselves about the Electoral College decision.) Ours is the real world. We are not extras in a Grade B James Bond movie. The 99% may not have billions of dollars influence as do some members directly in the new administration. Nevertheless, we may remind ourselves that we are human beings with full, rich lives and consciences that contribute productively to this planet. We count. We will count.

Sooner than later, the purpose for which the man who has been placed to serve as president will have been served and he will be removed. In his place will be the one that was positioned according to the nefarious Friedmanite agenda. Thanks to the audaciousness of the braggadocio Lord Fautleroy, the intended cabinet will be positioned to move forward with their insatiable agenda of deregulation of everything including the nation’s kitchen sink.

It has been easy to throw darts at a buffoon, and to some degree, served as a relief. However, Pence is a well spoken politician and extreme Christian right wing white male who wields, without measure, a big stick. It will be more pertinent than ever to not relent on our vigilance.

Ana Castillo is the writer of over 18 books, including So Far From God, Massacre of the Dreamers, and Black Dove.