WHOSE BARRIO? is an emotionally charged look at the changes in Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem as real estate speculation pushes rents and property values past the point of affordability for most area residents. By interviewing long-time East Harlemites and new arrivals, and digging deep into the flavor of a neighborhood long regarded as a cultural homeland for Latinos and other ethnic groups, the film reveals a complex web of individual and community interests. Directed and produced by Ed Morales and Laura Rivera, WHOSE BARRIO? is having its world premiere at the New York International Latino Film Festival on August 2, 2009.

They producers are seeking: Salsa – Fania style songs; Mambo – Palladium years style songs; Danzon; Danza and Puerto Rican Folk Conjunto.

For more info or to submit your music contact: Ed Morales, 347-271-4615, 646-342-2100, emorale@optonline.net

By Juleyka Lantigua

As you may know, taxpayers are about to own 60% of General Motors. So here’s our chance to get exactly what we want in our favorite mode of transportation. Personally, I am looking forward to annual meetings in which I can discuss my wish list at length with fellow stockholders.

A driver for over fifteen years, I have accumulated a list of improvements that I believe will make all our driving experiences more pleasurable. Feel free to add your own thoughts, fellow shareholder.

1.    How about 100 miles per gallon. We’ve been to the Moon and sent rovers Mars, but still can’t figure this one out?
2.    Standard built-in navigation systems for all models. Why should the rich be the only ones who don’t get lost anymore?
3.    Volume and tuning buttons standard on all steering wheels. The number of accidents avoided will stagger you.
4.    Remote control key for every car. There’s no reason a 2-cent battery in a plastic case should be turned into a luxury item.
5.    Different sounds for different warnings. Door open = three bells. Key in ignition = 4 pings. Headlights still on = 2 knocks. Those are just suggestions, but you get the point.
6.    Power-controlled seats on the driver and passenger seats; sometimes the driver is the passenger, and that’s an unpleasant surprise.
7.    Value retention, for real.
8.    Built-in technology that melds our techie lifestyles (iPods, cell phones, etc.)
9.    Roadside assistance service modeled after On-Star, connecting the car directly to the manufacturer and sharing performance data automatically, to keep you safe and the car running smoothly.
10.    Lastly: car designed so sleekly they make you want to get in and go fast.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the world.

By Juleyka Lantigua
The more I hear, read, and witness the reaction of many (mostly conservative) white people to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the worse I feel for white people in general.

You know the feeling. That nagging sense of collective embarrassment (C.E.) some of us brown/black folks feel whenever “one of us” does something so outrageously unimaginable that we shrug our shoulders and brace for impact.

Examples:
    A Latino mayor of huge city admitting to cheating on his wife.
    A certain Black civil rights icon threatening to castrate a presidential candidate.
    A Black star athlete shooting himself in a club after strapping his gun to his sweatpants.
    A first Latino governor who can’t get confirmed for Cabinet because he’s so corrupt.

I don’t know for sure if white people ever get a serious outbreak of C.E., but I bet plenty of them are feeling a little rash-y right about now. The likes of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Bill O'Reilly and their ilk have spent the last week chomping at Judge Sotomayor, and trying to best each other for bottom-feeder status.

Among their most ignorant claims:
    She’s an immigrant fluent in “illegal speak.”
    She’s a racist who thinks she’s better than a white man.
    Her menstrual cycles will impact court rulings.
    She does not know the real America.

I’m not accusing all white people of sharing these incendiary views, not by far. But what I am aware of is that the rest of us non-whites are watching and listening carefully, because deep down in places we don’t talk about, we live with the fear that to some extent many more white folks see us in such radically warped ways as to render some of these statements .0000000001% true in their worldviews.

And that’s why I feel bad for white people right now. I feel bad for them because an almost measurable degree of doubt has been introduced to their relationships with the rest of us, because they have all become somewhat suspect in our eyes—just a tiny bit—because the most vociferous and dangerously ignorant among them have unleashed the type of venom that clouds the air for years.

I hope I’m wrong about this, and that this is merely a fleeting manifestation of some deep-set paranoia the immigrant, Bronx-bred, educated Latina in me harbors in a forgotten crevice in her mind.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the world.

By Juleyka Lantigua

Despite all the depressing news about the evaporating worth of money, the imploding world economy and the impending doom about to befall us, right now is exactly the time to make one important financial investment: improving your personal finance knowhow.

My recommendation is a $16 investment in Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties, a book that changed my life when someone recommended it to me a decade ago. Like many of you out there, I grew up in a working class household (in the South Bronx) where we got by paycheck to paycheck. Those circumstances made for very pragmatic money managing principles: if you don’t have cash in hand, you can’t afford it. If you want something extra nice, start saving today. Those solid principles form a sturdy foundation for building financial stability and wealth, but without the right tools and knowledge, you won’t reap the benefits of living in the most advanced capitalistic system in history.

Stocks, bonds, insurance, compound interest and all such financial terms, did not enter my vocabulary until I was considerably in debt and headed straight for a financial abyss. In a moronic and robotic way, I was just making monthly payments and trying to avoid the dreaded collections calls, while making decent salaries and living well beyond my means.

Then I read this exceptional primer and began a serious overhaul of my financial life. Today, I’m no millionaire, but I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I would be—in terms of managing my debt, saving for retirement, and making smarter money decisions—than I would have ever been without this guide.The author, Beth Kobliner, is a contributor to the New York Times, and a former staff writer for Money magazine and financial columnist for Glamour. Her no-nonsense, jargon-free approach will decode the otherwise intimidating worlds of real estate, investment portfolios, savings plans and much more.Maybe you’re all set when it comes to managing your money. Congratulations. Now help out your sibling or friend who’s still struggling: buy them this book.

Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties by Beth Kobliner, 2009 edition, paperback, $16 

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the world.

By Juleyka Lantigua

Since AmeriCorps was founded by President Clinton in 1993, 540,000 members have served with thousands of nonprofit organizations, public agencies and faith-based organizations nationwide. Among many other things, members tutor and mentor youth, build affordable housing, clean parks and streams, and recruit, train and manage community volunteers, and coordinate after-school programs.

In exchange, volunteers receive a very modest monetary award they can use towards college or qualified student loans. During their term of service, volunteers are also provided training, student loan deferment, health care, and in about half the cases, a modest annual living allowance.

The bill that President Obama just signed contains a few important changes: it increases volunteers to 250,000 from 75,000 annually, and bumps the education allowance to match the amount given by a Pell education grant ($5,350). The areas of service will also be expanded to include education, veterans’ affairs, health care, and renewable energy.

More needs to be done, though.

According to AmeriCorps, 46 percent of members embark on careers in education, social work, public safety, government and military service. A way to modernize the volunteer organization is to create strong mentorship opportunities for volunteers to interact with high-level managers, executives and elected officials who can help them envision and shape careers in those fields.

But to fully mature AmeriCorps we need to create tangible career tracks that lead to lasting professions in service, civic entrepreneurship, and elected office. President Obama is a perfect example of how community-level experience can form a solid foundation for a life in service and leadership.

We should provide the same opportunity to others.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the world.

By Juleyka Lantigua

Inspired by the current Facebook craze that compels people to tell everyone stuff no one really needs (or wants) to know, I decided to put together 25 random things you may want to know.

1.    While Latinos make up 13.5% of the U.S. population, they account for only 7% of the bachelor’s degrees. Only one in four college-age Latinos is actually in college.
2.    The estimated circulation of newspapers targeting Latinos is 16M.
3.    Latinos have a combined buying power of over $452B.
4.    JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, SunTrust, HSBC and Citizens Bank all have indicated they will stop issuing student loans to students who attend community colleges.
5.    About 6.2M students attend community colleges, adding up to 40% of all undergraduates.
6.    Latinos make up 13.5% of the U.S. population but 19% of new HIV infections each year.
7.    An estimated 28% of Latino students drop out of high school, compared to 7% of white students and 13% of Black students.
8.    Nearly 50M adults (ages 20-74)—or 27% of the adult population—are obese.
9.    Overall, more than 108M adults, or 61% of the adult population are either obese or overweight.
10.  Ethnic minorities are 50% more likely than whites to live in communities with hazardous waste facilities.
11.  Close to 90 municipalities in 27 states have drafted—and a handful have enacted into law—ordinances that prohibit landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants.
12.  Among them are: Farmers Branch, Texas, Palm Bay, Fla., Valley Park, Mo., Riverside, N.J., and Hazleton, Pa.
13.  13.9M people (including 4.7M children) belong to families in which the head of the household is an undocumented immigrant.
14.   There are more than 1.5M adopted children in the United States, accounting for 2% of all U.S. children.
15.   An adoption law in Florida requires that, before putting a child up for adoption, a pregnant woman publish in a newspaper the names of partners, their physical descriptions, and locations where conception may have taken place if she does not know the father’s identity.
16.   Florida, which ranks fourth nationwide in adoptions, is the only state with such a law.
17.   In Florida, a woman does not need to consult the biological father to get an abortion.
18.   By law, more than 100 New York City agencies must offer assistance, documentation, interpretation and publications in six foreign languages: Spanish, Russian, Italian, French Creole, Korean and Chinese.
19.   170 languages are spoken in New York City.
20.   In L.A. County, at least 224 languages have been identified, with publications being produced in about 180 of them.
21.   Miami is probably the most truly bilingual city in the entire U.S., with 58.5% of the county’s 2.4M residents speaking Spanish.
22.   31 percent of American adults—63M people—know someone who has used a dating website.
23.   About 15% of—30M—know someone who has been in a long-term relationship or married someone he or she met online.
24.   58 percent of Latino consumers own a desktop computer.
25.   More than 16M Latinos are online.

Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.

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Note: All pop-up content embedded into articles are selected by our site editors and not individual contributors. They are purely for informational and contextual purposes and do not constitute an endorsement by individual contributors to the República Update.

Matt Taibbi has a very interesting take on the economic crisis in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine entitled “The Big Takeover where he goes on to say  that the global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power and how Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution."

The article's opening line "It's over — we're officially, royally fucked," hooked us right in.

Thanks to Christophe for the lead.

More after the [ JUMP ]

By Juleyka Lantigua
Happy Women’s History Month. We’re making it as we live and breathe.

Starting with First Lady Michelle Obama, prominent intelligent, educated and powerful black and brown women will inspire, validate, reassure and motivate young women who have lacked viable role models in key areas like politics, corporate America and social leadership.

As simple as it may seem, the example of a woman of color serving as a Senator, in a cabinet position or on a board of directors has an immediate mirror effect.

Countless little girls can easily see themselves in women like Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, PepsiCo Chairwoman Indra K. Nooyi or U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. The usual “when I grow up I want to” can now be filled in with “serve on the President’s Cabinet,” “lead a Fortune 500 company,” “work in international relations.”

Growing up in the South Bronx in the 1980’s I rarely saw important Latina and black politicians or public servants to inspire me to follow in their footsteps. My aspirations were set by watching successful men, and dreaming of one day being “a female something.” I thought that succeeding as a woman would make me an exception in male professions, almost regardless of the field. I thought about being a female lawyer, a female pilot, a female writer, a female university president, even a female Supreme Court judge.

That’s no longer the case.

Today, little girls everywhere will not need to think it’s exceptional that they can be corporate leaders, members of Congress, secretary of something, or hold a high post in the White House. Seeing women like EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Cecilia Muñoz, who heads the White House office of Intergovernmental Affairs, and White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett opens up layers and layers of possibility.

On the corporate side, women of color represent 13.4 percent of the U.S. workforce, with more than five million holding managerial and professional positions. But in the Fortune 500 companies we only account for 1.7 percent of corporate officers and top earners (the five highest-paid employees in a company), according to Catalyst, a research firm.

Leaders like Xerox President Ursula Burns and former MTV President Christina Norman ignite curious young minds to explore the possibility of one day assuming those posts. They also give mothers and fathers role models to point to when their daughter comes home eager to reach for the stars.

So, during this women’s history month, please share these examples — or some of your own — with the young girls in your life.

Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.

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Note: All pop-up content embedded into articles are selected by our site editors and not individual contributors. They are purely for informational and contextual purposes and do not constitute an endorsement by individual contributors to the República Update.

By Juleyka Lantigua

This Valentine's Day, millions will celebrate romance with a loved one they met online. My husband and I are among them. We met three years ago on Match.com, one of the largest dating sites. We'd both been single for a while. I did it as a dare from my younger and hipper sister, who said I was not cool enough to give it a try. My husband joined after friends convinced him that the dating prospects in his small town were limited. By the time we met, we'd both gone on a couple of blind dates. After connecting via the site and emailing for a couple of weeks, we spoke on the phone and arranged to meet for dinner.

After dinner effortlessly turned into a late-night movie, followed by a moonlit walk around Times Square, we got together the next day for brunch.

For us, there were many advantages to going online. We both work in very demanding fields, which left little time for the traditional social scene. He lived in a small town in Connecticut while I lived in New York City. Under normal circumstances, our paths would have never crossed. But even before we met each other, our ability to get to know different people, whether just online or by going on dates, allowed us to confirm exactly what type of person we were looking for. Luckily, we also clicked in a nuanced romantic way, and decided within a few weeks to date exclusively.

Though we met in a very modern way, all the beauty of traditional courtship followed our first date — flowers, chocolates, kind gestures, dinners with the family, trips together and more. This year, we will celebrate our third Valentine together and we could not be happier. We're no longer a novelty. Our story is repeated daily, as more and more singles go online to find that special someone.

Another prominent site, eHarmony, estimates that an average of 236 couples get married everyday after meeting on their site. They surveyed over 10,000 people who married between 2006-2007 and found that 19 percent had met their spouse online (not just on eHarmony). That's almost one in five.

These days, my husband and I regularly socialize with people who met their loved one online. The very first wedding we attended together was for a friend of his who had met his wife that way. Early on, we were shy about telling the story of how we met, but today online dating is so common that people often share their own stories with us.

So look around at the couples at nearby tables if you're out for dinner on Valentine's Day. Chances are some of them met online. There's no shame in that. Just love.

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Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.

By Juleyka Lantigua

“Give us your ideas, and we’ll give them to the president.”

That deceptively simple invitation lured me into the multi-layered change.gov website a few weeks ago—during a sleepless night, mind you. In case you don’t know, change.gov was set up by the Obama-Biden transition team as the preferred communication tool between the powers that be and the rest of us. There are many useful and many not-so-useful things on the site. (I’ll let you invest/waste your own time figuring out which is which.)

As I was saying, one recent winter night insomnia was tap dancing on my eyelids, so I logged on to see what people were saying. The set up was that you could vote for or against each post in order to move it up or down in the ranking, resulting in the best ideas getting the most votes and floating to the top, while the really bad ones sank to the bottom.

Allow me to summarize the more popular entries from the night I logged on:

--Withdrawing our troops from Iraq
--Free universal healthcare for everyone
--Ending our dependence on foreign oil
--Increasing our sources of sustainable energy

And so on. You get the picture; these are all BIG ideas that definitely need to be tackled, but that will take a loooooong time. So, in the interest of practicality, I decided to add some of my own ideas to the mix, just to see which would float and which would sink.

--Requiring that all public college/university graduates speak one foreign language fluently (starting with Spanish, Arabic, Chinese and Russian) in order to graduate
--Granting permanent resident status to any undocumented immigrant (w/o a criminal record) who has been in the country for 5+ years (and their kids and spouses)
--Forgiving 50% of all subsidized student loans for people who graduated in the last 10 years, so they can pump that money back into the economy
--Adding a community service requirement in order to graduate public high schools
--Establishing a guaranteed 2% interest rate for all first-time homebuyers with good credit who can put 10-20% down
--Cutting the payroll tax in half, so employers and employees get a cash infusion immediately
--Removing all vending machines from public schools

Needless to say, soon after I thrust my ideas into the public arena (much like a gladiator facing a packed Roman coliseum) I started to fret as people began to weigh in and rank them. Soon, I started to get very, very sleepy……

Juleyka Lantigua is a writer whose work has appeared in books, magazines and newspapers around the country.