“Never Do Anything Against Conscience”

Albert Einstein once cautioned people to “Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.” I have always tried to live my life that way. Whenever I have seen wrong or injustice, I have done my best to combat injustice and to make right that which is wrong. When corrupt power has existed because of silence, I have done my best to speak truth to power because I know — as the organization Act Up warned, “Silence = Death.”

I am frankly ashamed of myself because for a year and a few months, I held my tongue in a lot of private and public forums because I was the de facto brother in law of Xenaro Ayala, whom I once thought of as a friend and a man to be respected. As of a month ago, my significant other — after more than a year of interference in my relationship by both Xenaro and his daughter Libertad — abruptly stopped communicating with me and then, as of about a hour ago, finally changed her Facebook status to single, interested in men. As an “oh by the way,” during a previous episode where my then significant other caved in to family pressure but at least had the decency to tell me she was breaking off with me (we reconciled after a couple of weeks), Libertad (who had her FB password and login info) changed her status without her knowledge or consent to single, interested in women!

So now that I no longer have to hold my tongue out of any sense of familial loyalty, my conscience compels me to speak truth to power and to push humpty dumpty down off his throne.

Selective Memory or Just Mentiroso

A little over a year ago on Thanksgiving I had the occasion to be at Libertad’s home for a family gathering. Without belaboring the details, the event degenerated into a screaming match between Xenaro and my then-significant other. At some point, as the arguing was going on in lightning fast Spanish that I couldn’t keep up with, Xenaro finally blurts out, “okay, I’ll tell him to his face. As far as I’m concerned Jan is just some guy who used to hang around with Miguel.” He was referring to Miguel Perez.

Aside from the fact that if I hadn’t witnessed it, I could not conceive of a Chicano family that is so dysfunctional that a guest in a family home would be insulted like that, Xenaro either has a bad memory, a selective memory, or in the heat of ranting he loses all impulse control and simply becomes muy mentiroso. I knew Xenaro before I knew my now ex-significant other. I walked precincts to gather signatures in 1971 when I had been involved in the John Blaine (Peace & Freedom Party) and Raul Ruiz (later one of my professors at CSU Northridge) on the La Raza Unida Party ticket in a special election against Bill Brophy (R) and Richard Alatorre (D) for State Assembly in East Los Angeles. In 1972 I walked precincts with African American activist Ida Mae Willis in the black community in Pacoima (near to where I grew up, in Arleta) to get signatures to get La Raza Unida Party candidate Lupe Ramirez on the ballot. When she failed to get enough signatures to qualify, I personally sent a mailing to all PFP registrants in the district urging them to vote for her as a write-in candidate.

In 1973, I orchestrated a PFP primary fight in order to split the PFP vote to enable Andres Torres to get into the runoff as an independent LRU candidate against Alan Robbins (D) and Phil Johnson (R). While at CSUN, double majoring in Political Science and Chicano Studies, I completed my field work for the “Field Work in Barrio Studies” major required class (3 units, along with a 1 unit Political Science independent study I did with Dr. Phil Wall) by interning with LRUP San Fernando. I could actually go on ad nauseum about my years with LRUP in its early days, but I think this narrative poses the question very well: does Xenaro have a selective memory, a bad memory, or is he just a liar with bad manners and poor impulse control?

Mi Familia Primero

Since I seem to have a less selective memory (or more truthful?) than Xenaro, I should remind him and other well meaning LRUP members about a party principle from the early days of this once great movimiento: Mi Familia Primero! Especially for any man of honor, that should mean a commitment to his blood relatives.

Let me take a moment to expose my own bias: as is well known, I completed 9 units of Women’s Studies at CSUN (where I met my now ex-significant other in a course taught by Anna Nieto-Gomez, years after I’d met Xenaro). I became a member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1979 and have for some years served as Co-President of the San Fernando Valley/Northeast Los Angeles Chapter of NOW. To put it simply, I’m a feminist.

So one thing that really pissed me off about Xenaro is when I found out that he had “forbidden” my significant-other to join NOW! You know how that strikes me? Those who are Pro-Choice regarding a woman’s right to control the uses of her own body, such as to terminate a pregnancy, are often apt to say that a man should have no right to enforce mandatory pregnancy on a woman. I happen to think that a brother should have no right and no gall or audacity to tell his sister or any woman that she can’t join a feminist organization….and I’m very sad for my ex-significant other to have suffered the humiliation of having to fear her brother’s wrath about such an issue.

But what is way worse is what I think about deadbeat dads, especially those who get up on their high horse and pretend to be all in favor of the rights of La Mujer. I happen to consider such people lower than filth. In the case of Xenaro, when I found out his dirty little secrets and had to hold my tongue about it due to simply being polite to my then-de facto brother in law, I realized that after his other mondo-bizarro behavior, he’d started at the bottom and managed to work his way down.

He had a daughter that he’d never had anything to do with and when she tragically died of cancer, he refused to have anything to do with his grand-children. At least to her credit, Libertad entered into a relationship with that family, one of the few things I can give her credit for. Which brings up the next issue….

Control Freak Par Excellence

Talk about mondo-bizarro, Libertad, unbeknownst to me, had apparently for some years been encouraging my now ex-significant other to ask me out on a date. It never occurred to her that we might actually fall in love with each other. However, her explanation for why is just plain sick: she ultimately attributed it to, as though I’m some piece of meat to be objectivized, that she figured I was a guy who “would put out.” She openly told my now ex-significant other that she figured that she would just have a fling with me for a couple of months and then just play the field.

So when Libertad realized that both of us considered this relationship to be just that, a loving and true relationship, she maliciously began trying to convince my now ex-signficant other that I was cheating on her. At some point, she accused me of having an affair with a board member of my NOW Chapter after having only just met her and as though she is the font of all knowledge about relationships. Nevertheless, these repeated malicious accusations were a few steps above other stuff I was subjected to by Xenaro.

I won’t let them disrespect you (famous last words)

A few facts for background. When my now ex-significant other very early on in our relationship told me some of the family history, she made what I considered was a solemn representation and promise: she would not let her family insult and disrespect me the way that they had insulted and disrespected her ex-spouse. I have to admit that with her ex-spouse that he probably deserved it. As she pointedly said in her speech at the 2010 National Chicano Moratorium rally (a speech which I was then and remain very proud and touched that she made), pointed out that she had been raped and abused during her marriage. It took great courage for her to get up and say that publicly. I just wish that she’d had more courage to stand up to her family about me and about us.

I won’t shake a rapist’s hand and I won’t give one the time of day, whether it is spousal rape, date rape, or stranger rape. I certainly can’t see a person who purports to support the rights of La Mujer even being civil to somebody who had done that to his sister. But I have seen Xenaro do precisely that to his other ex-brother-in-law. He’s shaken his hand and accepted a pat on the shoulder from that pig….well, I guess it’s what you expect from one MCP (Male Chauvinist Pig) to another. Either Xenaro is a hypocrite of the worst order, or else he really is an MCP despite his public pretensions. As for shaking the hand of a rapist and spousal abuser, well that brings up the next issue.

Dissing a young companera with no rhyme nor reason

There is somebody that Xenaro refused to treat with respect: my good friend and fellow NOW board member Maria Juarez. Maybe Xenaro just can’t stand feminista uppity women.

At a community ceremony to honor mujeres of the movimiento, who had given their lives (like my ex-significant other, his own sister who was receiving one of the awards), Xenaro refused to shake the hand of Maria, the Mistress of Ceremony, and told her to her face that his wife would shake her hand for him!!!! I swear that I’m not making this up. I couldn’t dream behavior this strange up even if I tried and as people know I have a very vivid imagination.

Adding Insult to Injury

I have my faults. No kidding. I’ve done some things I’m ashamed of in my time. However one thing I’ve never compromised with before is racism and anti-Semitism whether it’s directed at me or somebody else….until I felt I had to endure it with Xenaro for the sake of my relationship with his sister.

My father taught me early on to abhor racism of any sort. One of my earliest memories is of my father arguing with a white neighbor about de-segregation and my father answering the worst nightmare of most racists, “what if your daughter wanted to marry a nigger” with “If she loved him that’s absolutely fine with me.” I also learned about anti-Semitism up close and personal. Another early childhood memory is my bloodying Richard Farmer’s nose in fourth grade for calling me a dirty Jew.

As an adult, an Anglo girlfriend once told me that her workmates (she was a legal secretary with a doctorate in Philosophy from USC) told her they thought it was “controversial” that she was dating a Jew. That was about as close to relational interference as I’ve ever been subjected to with any woman (at least since high school, dealing with over-protective parents) and certainly I’d never, ever experienced any interference (other than weirdo ex-husbands) from anybody’s family members.

Some more background….I wear a Jewish Star of David and wear a ring with a Mogen David. I was also at one time active with the American-Israel Civil Liberties Union, had a half-Arab girlfriend at one time, have had two Arab room mates in the past, have many Muslim friends and clients, and my therapist is Arab-American. I support independence for Palestine as a secular democracy and I support renaming the State of Israel as the State of Israel & Ishmael and fully secularizing its government, especially when it comes to family law which is and always has been fully accorded to the religious authorities of the various “official religions.” As an American who supports the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Israel’s establishment of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and a few other religions as official in the realm of family law and in numerous other categories is to me, an outrage.

Now I’ve been around the block a few times and I know when somebody is baiting me. Xenaro thinks he’s real smart at political meetings, like the Chicano Moratorium planning committee, bringing up the Palestine-Israel issue when there was no particular rational reason to bring it up….other than to try to goad me (into what I don’t know). Instead of manning - up and just coming out and asking me what my views on the Middle East are (my viewpoint may very well be more radical than his), he periodically resorted to this needling of me. I’ve got news for him: assuming that all Jews support the Israeli government is in and of itself anti-Semitic; by definition, it’s prejudice and discriminatory. However, I have to hand it to him, because he at least has enough impulse control to beat around the bush with his anti-Semitic assumption that I support the Israeli government, because on another level, he has no impulse control.

Playing the Race Card

The last time I checked, I was a member of the human race. There may be some reason to doubt that, what with my having opposable toes like a Chimpanzee and all, but unless you consider other primates as races, there is no biological rationale for the concept of different races of humans in the modern world, nor has there been since the Neanderthals and Denisovens inter-bred with and were submerged into homo sapiens. I have a confession to make though….according to my California Driver License I have blue eyes and blonde hair.

So, during one of his rants at a Chicano Moratorium Planning Committee meeting, when as usual and as I am used to, I am the only pinche gabacho at the table, Xenaro goes off on white people, specifically raving over and over again about “blonde blue eyed white people.” Am I not supposed to be insulted or am I living on some planet other than Earth and in some political entity other than California?

I held my tongue because he was my de facto brother in law.

Now that he and his daughter appear to have brow-beaten my now significant other into breaking off her relationship with this Gringo-Jew, my tongue has only begun to wag.

PS: Here’s a reality check: Is this mondo-bizarro behavior just my opinion or what? Well, the well-respected Union Del Barrio gave an opinion of the weirdness and mentally defective BBNO (Brown Berets National Organization as opposed to the National Brown Berets de Aztlan) as early as 1997. What’s the context? At the National Chicano Moratorium Committee (NCMC) planning meetings for this past year’s Moratorium commemoration, Geronimo Blanco accidentally let the cat out of the bag about what relatively normal people might consider delusions of grandeur, the LRUP and BBNO’s alliance in which the “Government” of Aztlan is going to be the LRUP headed by “Presidente” (El Jefe or whatever he wants to be called) Xenaro Ayala and the “Army” of Aztlan is going to be the BBNO.

Well, here’s my reality check. Actually, it was NCMC Jaime Cruz’s reality check: he deftly inquired of Xenaro and Blanco which of them had people who were qualified to land aircraft on aircraft carrier vessels or such mundane governmental tasks as organizing garbage collections for cities. Nobody, especially Xenaro and Blanco had an answer for such esoteric questions as that (okay, so esoteric is a bad choice of words; Jaime’s rhetorical questions were well grounded in reality). Now, here’s the link which shows what inquiring (and non-delusional) minds want to know, proving that I’m not the only person (even if I’m the only pinche gabacho) that even gives a s-t about this stuff…

http://uniondelbarrio.org/lvp/newspapers/97/janmay97/pg08.html

Tweet