What's the New News Issue 3 2019

WTNN

ART and HISTORY

What’s the new news

Issue No. 3/ December 2019

Creator

Nathaniel Donnett

Director

Marci Dallas, Fresh Arts/Arts District Houston

Editor / Graphic Designer / Project Manager

Theresa Escobedo, Arts District Houston

Operations + Special Project Support

Micah Moreno, Fresh Arts

Contributors

Gerald Cedillo

Rayla Crawford

Willow Curry

Marci Dallas

Ashley DeHoyos

Deborah “DEEP” Mouton

Reyes Ramirez

Leslie Contreras Schwartz

Dulcie David Veluthukaran

Newspaper Box Artists

Vivienne Dang

Janavi Folmsbee

Ibraim Nascimento

Jessica Rice

Royal Sumikat

Jade Young

Marketing & Communications Manager

Mageida Sopon, Medley Inc

What’s the New News is published with a grant from EmcArts’ Incubating Innovation program through Houston Endowment, Houston Arts Alliance, and Arts District Houston

What’s the New News

Newsstand Locations:

Henderson & Kane General Store 715 Henderson Street

Copyright 2019

Decatur Bar & Pop-Up Factory 2310 Decatur Street Fresh Arts 1502 Sawyer Street, #103

Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts (MECA) 1900 Kane Street

Stanton’s City Bites 1420 Edwards Street

Meek Studio & Gallery 1903 Spring Street

Past, Present, Future, and Repeat as Incomplete

by Nathaniel Donnett

Every now and then you hear people say, “If you don’t know your history, you will repeat it.” Generally the aphorism is accompanied with a moral connotation that implies an emphasis on knowing, possibly in an attempt to know all that will happen in the present and the future. But what if you do know your history and you wish to revisit or reflect upon it without judgment and the expectation of it repeating? Maybe the repetition of history presents an opportunity for something interesting to happen. What if you want to understand your present day but not fully, so that the unknown space of non-understanding becomes a space to occupy with curiosity and imagination? Probably what happens is that one’s understanding of place, space, self, and the collective becomes self-evident.

What’s the New News has had five iterations over time, beginning in 2010 and ending in 2018. Each iteration has been very special and important. Each contributor who was invited or who invited themselves (lol) to participate has given new life and new perspective on what experimental transference of information through news media strategies means within a community. WTNN questions the role of the newspaper, news, and sharing of information as an aesthetic form. This notion of community collaboration and partnership contributed greatly to What’s the New News and its success. However, the project is perpetually incomplete. That incompleteness is not what we associate with unfinished, therefore incorrect, acts of laziness, or unfocused work, but rather understands that there is potential for more. It’s very similar to when a friend speaks with a friend and time unexpectedly grows short until they speak again… the conversation — the spirit of it — picks right back up where it left off. The conversation on a granular level never really ends — there is still future potential for the project because it creates its past and its history by moving forward, even as it sadly eventually moves into a space of memory.

What’s the New News began in 2010 but over the years has taken breaks to reflect, reformulate, revisit, and revise. With each break, it has revamped its history and placement in a spatial morality zone that was finite in order to invite uncertainty to its present day. The present day invited different spaces, different neighborhoods, and a different group of collaborators to create something out of history.

The current context of the New News does not suggest to forget history but rather to ask, How is history remembered? What is the context of history? What is its connection to you and to your present day? To your presence – if you will. How do you visit, revisit, create history, and reflect within the space you have created as you create history? What type of space is left for the future as a result of the present and past?

These questions, ideas, and more will be explored in this iteration of What’s The New News.

Nathaniel Donnett, Creator, What’s the New News

cHALLENGING OUR THINKING...

Have you ever had a moment when looking at a piece of art that makes you think a little more about the world you live in? According to Americans for the Arts 2018 public opinion poll, most Americans believe that the arts help us to understand other cultures better and that they unify our communities. At Arts District Houston, we believe not only this but also that the arts can help us to be more grounded within a place.

Throughout the United States, thirteen states have created cultural district programs. The goals for the program, as identified by Texas Commission on the Arts, are attracting artists and cultural enterprises to a local community, and creating a hub of economic activity that makes an area an appealing place to live, visit, and conduct business.

Arts District Houston is one of nearly 300 state-designated districts nation-wide and one of five in Houston. Fresh Arts took over management of the District in late 2017 because we believe that cultural districts have the capacity to be the building blocks that tell the story of Houston’s diverse artists and arts organizations. These districts represent a cross-section of the historic neighborhoods that make Houston so unique.

Arts District Houston is a colorful, urban community situated in the city center along the Washington Avenue Corridor. This lively historicallydesignated area is bound by two of the city’s bayous and made up of two of its oldest neighborhoods, the First and Sixth Wards. In these neighborhoods you can experience art and architecture in preserved industrial spaces like the former rice silos of Site Gallery at Sawyer Yards, the former underground drinking water facility at Cistern at Buffalo Bayou Park, and the first Houston neighborhood listed on the National Register of Historic Places - the Old Sixth Ward. You can also visit Glenwood Cemetery which was built in the 1870s when this was still a rural area, and feel the creativity flow throughout the local businesses, restaurants and 300+ artist studios.

This year, our focus was to challenge our thinking about our role as manager of Arts District Houston. We realize that we cannot tell the story of the present without examining the past and including the variety of histories that exist within the narrative. Through the process of connecting artists with community histories, we were reminded that people feel connected to a place when they see themselves reflected in it. We believe that storytelling is a radical act of affirming history and place, and that telling history builds cohesion, wayfinding and a sense of place.

Partnering community members with artists to make the hidden history of the area more visible and engaging not only results in unexpected interactive arts experiences for residents and visitors but also allows us to ask the questions: Is the cultural identity of the community being celebrated or diminished? Do we have all of the voices at the table? Who is missing?

Marci Dallas, Executive Director, Fresh Arts and Arts District Houston

working through history

It’s been an unforgettable year for Arts District Houston, to put it simply. The small team that manages this cultural district has committed to and expanded the mission of making space and creating opportunities for artists with gusto. In terms of metrics, that looks like 10 murals produced, 2 original performance productions developed, and this — Issue No. 3 of What’s the New News, produced by the contributions of its original creator, artist Nathaniel Donnett, 6 visual artists, and 8 creatives working as writers. Each and every one of these works has been made through the lens of history.

Key values we’ve maintained this year are inclusivity — seeking to work with artists of color (though not exclusively), and artistic development — working with artists who are interested and eager to expand their own creative practices. Essentially, we’ve curated our public works initiatives in such a way that, we believe, address and respond to gaps we observe in our artistic community and in some cases, our city at large.

Producing artworks inspired by local history has been the litmus test for our willingness to know ourselves as a community and as a means of understanding our present condition through excavating the implications of the past.

It’s no secret that Arts District Houston makes its home in two neighborhoods that are experiencing rapid evolution, and — dare I write it? — gentrification. Established early on in the City of Houston’s lifetime, the First and Old Sixth Ward enjoy nuanced histories which set the tenor of the character of the city to come. Looking at the history of these two closely intertwined neighborhoods has been like holding up a magnifying glass to a microcosm of our sprawling metropolis. The result — more confirmation and affirmation that this city is what it is because of the diversity of cultural influence that thrives here, co-existing and co-mingling to create a rich and rebellious cosmopolitan global identity. This identity we feel the need to highlight, again and again, and to preserve through art-making in such a way that allows us to retain the presence and perspective of artists at work within our designation. Because of the etch-a-sketch nature of the built environment in Houston, we certainly feel some urgency about making meaningful statements through the work we’ve embarked upon. We hope that any successes in these efforts that are measurable indicate what we believe — that art can act as a mechanism for reflection, self-evaluation, and for changing the present course.

“The Present” is a complicated place, full of tensions and territorialism and generational inheritances and wounds from social and political conflict — those parts of its character are unavoidable. Identity is complicated too. How can we examine these parts of our collective experience and the identity of place, honestly, and thoughtfully? For us, “through art” is always the answer. Thus it seems that engaging with working artists is the most appropriate means of mining our resources and expanding our understanding about the world in which we live.

Through the fleeting successes and unanticipated pitfalls of this year of public art-making, the most paramount lesson I take away: trust the process and trust the artists. The aggregated expressions of steadfast creative thinkers will tell you everything you need to know about the context you exist within, and so we open this publication to the voices of the artists we’ve sought to work with, each of which, through their respective creative practices, broaden the scope of our awareness by elucidating via notes from history.

The themes and ideas expressed in these pages have not been curated, or even carefully contrived, to be honest. We’ve asked each author to consider the relationship between art and history, to consider the history of the First and Sixth Wards, and to share their unique perspectives via the written word. What we find in the result is a powerful wave of creative energy that forces us to look at the fundamental, sometimes polarizing, nature of the American experience, the need to be seen as experienced by all cultures, and the curative potential of engaging in thoughtful, sometimes challenging, creative expression.

What we’ve learned for sure about history this year is that it belongs to everyone — a shared pool through which to glean a wealth of inspiration — and that it is fluid, constantly generative, and apt to change with more information, very much like our identity and like our collective and individual perspectives.

It is with special thanks to What’s the New News creator Nathaniel Donnett, for his broad vision and tremendous support of critical thinking and writing in Houston, that we present this work of literal art.

Theresa Escobedo, Project Manager, Arts District Houston

On “Fire and MOvement”

By Ashley DeHoyos

This past summer I engaged in a project with Chicago based artist Jefferson Pinder called Fire and Movement. The performance explored the history of Camp Logan Uprising, also known as the Camp Logan Riot, 1917. The uprising saw African American soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 24th United States Infantry revolt and attempt to march on the city after experiencing abuse from white citizens and the police in Jim Crow-era Houston.

The performance shed light on the interconnected and generational experiences of black Americans especially in regards to racial terror during the Summer of 1919 and its similarities to the current Black Lives Matter movement.

The Summer of 1919, also known as the Red Summer, a term coined by James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP, refers to a series of more than three dozen geographically dispersed race riots, lynchings, and other violent attacks targeting African Americans in the summer of 1919. Many of which were coming home from the war to new power dynamics and job scarcity.

Working to better understand the project and the interconnected experience, Jefferson developed a site specific performance that would engage in local history and situate it within the national context. As a curator, I spent my time working with Jefferson to develop cultural and historical context of Houston.

Through our ground work we had a lot to learn about the background of the city, narratives that lead to the escalation of fear and panic and we even researched the tactical path walking through the streets of Houston. Along the way, I had to ask myself a few questions, What would it mean for an arts organization to put 13 armed black men on the streets of Houston? How do we keep them safe?

PRESERVATION

Preservation often has fallen into the hands of the local residents, who turn into community leaders, and create local organizations to sustain and protect history. Artists are very similar in that way as they have become creative keepers and problem solvers, arming themselves with reaffirmed knowledge through historical research and valuing the local.

In October of 2018, when Jefferson approached me with the idea after week long site visit, I had no idea how we were going to pull this off and I also had no knowledge of Houston circa 1917, but that didn’t stop me from saying yes. I knew after spending five years in Baltimore — living in the city during the Freddie Gray Murder, the Uprising, and the protest — that this story needed to be told.

We are in a time where we see artists making an impact beyond the gallery wall by taking their work to the streets, on subway stations, or displaying it on billboards. Artists have this ability — a skill — developed or inherited from previous generations for testing the waters and painting with life. I often wonder what it would look like if artists were to join forces with community members, to create space, to revisit and re-examine narratives like the Camp Logan Riot? Perhaps we would have the ability to shift a paradigm. Perhaps preservation would have a different look.

There’s a recent movement called history politics, a term described by Austrian artist researcher and curator, Martin Krenn, as a “political and

social movement that understands that history is and always will be contested.” The idea behind this movement is that there is and never can be one official version of a historical event, though we are often thought through colonial power that the first narrative is always the truth. As we grow we understand that history is subjective — it is biased and unfair.

What we are told about August 11, 1917, lives in documents, court transcripts, maps, newspaper archives, and now, in the hands of 14 performers, a curator, and an audience of about 100 people. The story of the Camp Logan Soldiers lives on through creative action.

From community members, I learned about pardoning efforts made for the 13 convicted soldiers and about the efforts to exonerate them after they were tried for mutiny, the efforts to obtain headstones for unmarked graves, and about a recurring memorial which takes place every August. I learned about the life-long cultural keepers here in the city who work to preserve and inform anyone who will listen about the narratives hiding in plain sight and since, I’ve watched as artists begin to join in the conversation.

Some would argue that it wasn’t a riot as it was lead to be — that the soldiers didn’t come from camp without reason and were responding to abuse, a Jim-Crow Houston, and a situation that started with two police officers. Perhaps instead of riot, we could describe it as an act of resistance or rebellion. Perhaps it could it have been labeled as an Uprising or Revolt. The narrative reminds me of the Native Son — a simple story of when a boy is pushed too hard and he explodes. I wonder if, by using art, we could look back at history to better understand the cultural and historical context that set the stage for such an event? And If so what that would mean for the future?

MAKING SPACE

Mixing a layer of history, physical location, and the human body the performance marked space. A little under 4 miles of space, with the feet of the Fire and Movement performance team who engaged the routes for weeks. At first just walking, then incorporating 2 x 4 wood planks. They begin to open a loop.

“Embodiment of knowledge” or “history and experience,” I think this is what distinguishes it from a theater piece. There is a living history that exists there — not a straight-up reenactment or a celebration of what happened, but rather a reprocessing in such a way that uses body and space to repurpose the history and the energy that these spaces carry.” Jefferson Pinder.

The practice of responding to these types of situations is not relatively new, but is a model for shifting conversations and creating accountability between the past and present. History as a Contemporary gesture begins to open the door for us to examine new thoughts and ideas like ‘Cultural Amnesia’, a collective and often deliberate act of forgetting something, constantly moving forward, and never pausing to remember.

Re-imaging the past means revisiting past traumas, and sometimes unearthing history is not pretty, but it is a course of action that is necessary for healing. Looking back at history through a contemporary lens allows us to better understand the context of how we have arrived at this moment in time and about what has changed and what has not.

For a hundred years, two soldiers from the 3rd Battalion laid under a patch of Houston soil in unmarked graves, buried beneath the oak trees found at College Park Cemetery. It wouldn’t be until 2017 when Angela Holder, the great niece of Corporal Jesse Moore, of Company I of the 24th infantry would assist in getting proper headstones. But what would have happened if their story had died with them?

When I was a kid, I would get in trouble for writing on different surfaces, “I was here”, in places that I visited. It wasn’t until this project that I realized how important those tags were. What seemed like a childish act was actually my marking space in time. By scribing my name and the date at

my location, I was drafting my records.

I think about all the drafted records that exist in Houston. The narratives untold. I think about the places I’ve visited since I’ve been back home: the Old Hanging Oak tree at Capital and Bagby, the residual traces of old Chinatown nestled between Preston, St. Joseph Parkway and Emancipation, the Battle of San Jacinto every time I cross the ship channel, the Red Bricks of 4th Ward streets every time I visit Gray Street.... there are stories everywhere, stories that live amongst us waiting to be engaged.

ORIGIN STORY

By Willow Curry

At my first knowledge of the incident, I was stunned and enraged. But not surprised.

To explain, let me tell it in another way: thousands of Latinx Houstonians clothed in fabulous costumes and painted in elaborate masks had gathered under a twilit sky in the streets of what was once a predominantly MexicanAmerican neighborhood, to dance the night away in un desfile, and a disgruntled neighbor, unsuccessful with a noise complaint, was able to end the carnival of memory by invoking the specter of mass murder.

Even more simply: the presence of brown folks artfully, joyously celebrating their history and traditions elicited hostility in one entitled psyche, and so was countered by terrorizing dozens of people of color. A tale as old as time—or as old as the colonization of the Americas, at least. No, I was not surprised one bit.

To talk of art and history when it comes to historic communities of color is to tell much of the story of how we’ve survived brutalities of European colonization. Because art objects and performances in the cultures of indigenous Americans and kidnapped Africans already held multiple meanings—aesthetic and expressive, linguistic and spiritual—they were prime for use as tools of resistance. The pre-Columbian Incan khipu, knotted cords in various lengths, colors and knot sequences that comprised an elaborate communication and record-keeping system was adapted after invasion to keep track of what colonizers had taken. African “talking drums” that could mimic the tone-based languages common throughout the continent had been used in their original context to communicate everything from proclamations to poetry; in the New World, they enabled enslaved West Africans to coordinate escapes and one known rebellion.

Most methods of cultural-art-as-resistance were banned or destroyed to varying degrees of success once discovered by colonists. And though an unfathomable amount was lost over the centuries, new art forms and rituals rooted in the old bloomed out of each attempt at suppression, more resilient for having been threatened. El Dia de los Muertos is famously a melding of the Catholic observance of All Saints and Souls Day with ancient Aztec

traditions honoring the queen of the underworld and protector of the dead, Mictecacihuatl, upon her yearly return to the world of the living.

With the passage of time and the flying of colonial flags over the Americas, our battles to preserve our lives and legacies have evolved. Mass genocide has morphed into police killings, deadly hate crimes and the disparity in death rates due to socioeconomic and environmental factors. Deportation is the mirror image of forced resettlement. And land theft is still land theft, though it’s now achieved by different means: rather than massacring villages or lynching individuals to gain access to their property, areas can be deprived of essential infrastructure, receive little to no public or private investment and artificially devalued until they’re seen as desirable places to live, and subsequently gentrified.

Many of these modern battles are underpinned by capital, monetary capital in particular; if that were the only means of our continued survival, we would have been taken out long ago. Even now in the United States, the average Latinx household holds ten percent of the wealth of the average white household. The average Black household holds seven percent. Native American household wealth has not been measured since 2000, but going by those numbers, they hold just four percent. Fortunately, money has not been our only means. The hardiness and adaptability of our cultural inheritances have not only given us the resilience necessary for our continued survival, but created for us a massive stock of cultural capital, and our art-making forms perhaps the largest part of this stock.

The tenacity of our life ways and our stubborn tenacity in practicing them, in not assimilating, in being other has made us the never-ending target of disenfranchisement and displacement. Our bravery is seen as brazenness, a trait so intolerable that many have felt empowered to go to extremes in trying to control cultural expression and then adopting — appropriating it —for their monetary gain. But in response, we do what we have always done: create and celebrate — even when we know well what we stand to lose. We continue to dance in splendid colors under twilit skies. Call it brazen or call it brave: our work reminds all who live here of this land’s true origin story.

Near the end of a Dia de los Muertos celebration this year, hosted by a local, cultural arts education organization around which many in Houston gather to celebrate Latinidad, a report — ultimately false — of a man with an assault rifle was made, forcing the police to respond and the celebration shut down.

CHILDREN DREAM IN DOW SCHOOL

By Leslie Contreras Schwartz

here we could learn / here we could live / and so 15 of my Mexican great aunts and uncles / my Mexican grandpa and grandpa / lived in a small house in Old Sixth Ward / walked to Dow Elementary School / every day / this school for Mexican children / with teachers for Mexican children / with thoughts and imaginations and dreams of children / but told to have thoughts, imaginations, and dreams for Mexican children / but they carried a flicker of dreams, a red-blue ember / perhaps borrowed from the flames of their father’s fire as he molded horse shoes / imaginings that led one to study piano at the conservatory of music / another to attend the conservatory of art to study with the MFA’s founder / Emma Richardson Cherry / her brushstrokes in Cherry’s painting on display in the Old Library / six uncles who went to Word War II to liberate camps, to fight Germans, then come back home to discrimination / two uncles used the GI bill & went to university to become engineers / another uncle became Houston’s first Mexican firefighter / & also the uncle, a civil rights leader, with LULAC for 70 years / this is the family I come from / Eguia Contreras Lara Piña and this is just one family of children / who walked through that red brick school / and out / full of dreams that could not be taken / and I hope more walked out with the same dreams / I hope more of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren still carry that flicker and flame / I hope there are still places and spaces for those imaginings / the creative making / the forging and building / cities made of Mexican and Latinx children who are told Yes / Yes, go ahead and do it / exactly as you are / exactly how you speak & look & dance & sing / exactly as the child you were imagined to be / by the God with the most wild and loving imagination / by the God who made you from a brilliant dream

Reyes Ramirez: Prose and Poetry

In the Learning of Histories Begin Responsibilities

If you’re anything like me, an artist and teacher of color, you’ve probably asked: what is an equitable and just pedagogical model for oppressed peoples?

There’ve been responses for this quandary throughout American history. The Black Panther Party founded Liberation Schools and the Intercommunal Youth Institute from 1969-1971 because, “If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.” The Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons opened in 1817 as the first school in America designed to serve students with disabilities (that name, though). In Houston’s Old Sixth Ward, we have two examples: the Huelga School at Saint Joseph’s Church on 1505 Kane and Multicultural Education and Counseling through the Arts (MECA) at the Dow School building on 1900 Kane, both focused on the Mexican-American/Chicano/a/x population.

It’s important to ask and answer the above question because the marginalization of histories and art of oppressed peoples in education is the norm. Consider that it took until 2019 for the State Board of Education to consider adopting African American Studies, developed in Dallas Independent School District, for instructional implementation across Texas, two years after incorporating a Mexican American Studies course (Dallas, we Houstonians give you so much shit, but you’re cool.) However, the courses are electives. If you don’t know these histories exist, then how will you know to learn them? That’s what I mean by marginalization: the labeling of necessary knowledge for our youth as optional while prioritizing the normalization of erasure. Setting aside discussions of race, justice, and oppression is a means of denying that it’s happened or is happening.

This issue extends to higher education. The University of Houston touts its student body as one of the most diverse in the nation, yet when I was studying there, I had to take hours of courses focusing on white literature. The current course requirements for Creative Writing majors remains quite unchanged: 6 hours of British literature before 1798; 3 hours of any British literature (of which the vast majority are still white-centric); and 3 hours of American literature before 1900 (only one Native American lit course fulfills this). The next 12 hours of required courses are selected by students among various offerings, however, the course offerings for non-white literature were never as diverse as the white-centric literature. There was offered only one Mexican American Literature course and no offering of any Central American diaspora Literature (amongst many other intersections), for example. The priority is clear: you must be well versed in white literature for at least 12 hours to receive your degree.

Though we want more Latinxs to receive higher education, are institutions ready for them intellectually? I did take a Mexican American Literature course that vastly changed my intellectual and creative life. I’d never before read Tomas Rivera or Sandra Cisneros, but did at UH thanks to Texas’ reading lists. I can’t imagine what sort of writer I’d be if hadn’t ever read …y no se lo trago la tierra (and the earth did now devour him).

What if I had read that book years earlier? Who would I be? Who could any number of brown boys and girls be if they read literature and witnessed art by their peers? Why is this a sentiment being actively undermined in American education?

It’s why these two educational institutions stand out in Old Sixth Ward. They developed pedagogical models that center oppressed peoples and sought to empower them with knowledge. The Huelga Schools taught Mexican-American history, literature by Mexican-American writers, and Aztec mythology. As ever, MECA regularly offers ballet folklorico, mariachi, mosaic, and other arts courses that “promote learning in disadvantaged populations” and “explore and celebrate diverse cultures through ethnic art forms and cultural festivals, providing a forum for cultural expression through art.” At MECA, I’ve taken workshops for Spanish interpreters and provided resources to undocumented students. At many arts programs I’ve worked in, they either fail to address these issues or brush them aside entirely. Though the Huelga Schools existed between 1970-1972 and MECA has existed since 1977, contemporary educational institutions are barely entertaining the thought of centering oppressed peoples. In many respects, education and art by people of color is a futurist endeavor because the effort assumes that others will build upon and grow from them. To not center these histories and arts in education is to say there’s no future for us.

Though the pedagogy at Huelga Schools did center an oppressed peoples, parents sent their children there to avoid enrolling them into historically Black schools. Learning this truth assumes a responsibility: how do I teach the next generation to not continue racism and favor whiteness? How do I better center groups that have been erased from many Latinx institutions within my pedagogy i.e. Central American, LGBTQ, Afro-Latinx, etc.? We cannot supplant one oppressive model with another; to not do this work means you don’t actually want justice, but that you want to benefit from oppression.

There are many programs in Houston that aim to answer these many questions: the Montrose Center provides their Hatch Youth program that’s “dedicated to empowering LGBTQ adolescents,” the S.H.A.P.E. Community Center, dedicated to “improving the quality of life for people of African descent,” “provides life skills, cultural, recreational, homework assistance and academic enrichment activities for school-aged children.” If there are so programs outside of schools, what are school districts, universities, and museums doing to implement and/or learn from their models? Where’s the pipeline of self-realization for youth of color by teaching them the complex, difficult journeys past generations endured to get what we have now?

Once, at MECA, I walked into their library and thumbed through books by Latinx writers, some out of print. I read passages and felt grander, knowing that a generation or two before I wouldn’t even be allowed through the front door (the Dow School was racially segregated). By seeing what past generations imagined for me, I can envision what I must do for the next.

A 4th Grade Dance Party in the Cafeteria on a Monday at 1PM in Houston is My America

By Reyes Ramirez

The children file in, bright sneakers chirping across dark blue & grey tiles. We are all at work: I chaperone; lunch ladies count change; a custodian mops a corner; the gym teacher queues a playlist; no child must do anything except what the music urges. Mira, this dance is a nation of motion. I stand at a wall & become its facilitator.

The scheduled bell rings, the Black & Brown children hear a song, then another. The ones who know how to dance form a mass, and move to the beat.

The music becomes more familiar, more children join in this boiling of joints and sound. They know every dance: the milly rock, the Juju, running man. Even the ones before their life: the macarena, the wobble, the cha-cha slide. Each body mirrors another. This is a language we pass down because movement is our only truth.

I witness. A song’s lyrics progress until the lines everyone has memorized plays. The children sing in one mind from their many voices in honor of this shared joy. I need not be a member of this congregation to be saved by it.

Let anyone not in service to this milagro forget to breathe, their last sight the newest dance performed by children above their corpse.

It is 5 minutes until the bell rings. The children have grown old with fatigue & understand that everything ends: a song, a dance, this nation. The adults continue working: I file children back into a line; lunch ladies wait to leave; the custodian mops that corner; the gym teacher is just a gym teacher, now; the children go back to class to learn math. I realize that in the face of what needs to be changed in my country, I am still a child.

Mira, every nation must fulfill its promise. This is a nation that completes to build another.

The City That Pushes and Pulls: A Poem for the District

By Gerald Cedillo, Rayla Crawford, and Dulcie David Veluthukaran Produced by Deborah “DEEP” Mouton and VIP Arts Houston

In the beginning was the land over which no-one held sway,

Where shoes left a murky print dried beneath the Houston sun, and became home under unforgiving summer skies.

In the city of working hands we leave sweat like a hymn sung by a choir.

A city who watches how life brews itself into new eras. Here we stand

In what was once a slum: topaz hops fermenting in stainless steel tanks beside a red brick tap room. In what was once a hotbed of industry: sodium lights and the silent busts of past presidents, theW genie overlooking everything on the Mahatma rice silo building

In what was once a land beset with scorpions artists are given the space and time to mend the fabric of their surroundings. Muslim boys afraid to say their family name except when spitting poetry on a factory floor proudly producing furniture that will furnish rooms in the houses of your soul.

In what was once a place of transition Monday through Friday flutters and flaunts and finds a place to dazzle.

Here we stand,

A sunset of a community that has collaged into self into memory too fond to ever be forgotten Flea-markets with one-of-kind jewelry and collectibles. Past ship channels and wood frame

Historic houses held the laughter of the family that still echo for years to come make your offrendas on the steps of MECA watch the flockprinters at Black Swan burn magic emblems in the open air, rebel radios blaring a bomba rock beat. An open-armed welcome from those who best know these streets.

Smile at actors waiting side stage at in all their heartbreaking seriousness walk alongside the pink and purple women Who carry homes on their shoulders To remind that this bayou still takes part in a larger sea. The art district has always been a place of transition. Of hues vibrant beyond what the eyes could even imagine.

If our city’s past is the soil

Then artist are the seeds And their creations a beautiful crop

Once, it was just a land that dried beneath our feet And now there is a little space we have made where we can go and recreate ourselves.

Where we can dream, and balance, And make

Where we discover, remedy and create

Here we stand

In the arts district

Giving thanks for the ever-evolving land.