Borderzine (https://borderzine.com/category/voces-blogs/page/21/)
EL PASO — A bead of sweat hits the mat. Adrenaline is pumping through every vein in my body as I am trying to choke out my opponent with rear naked choke. Looking for an arm bar, rear naked choke, guillotine, or kamora, any opening that my opponent gives me I will take.
EL PASO — Parecía ser una invitación más a la nostalgia: “España 1939-2009, 70 años de Exilio Republicano”. Ese tipo de invitaciones que aparecen intempestivamente en los pasillos universitarios de todo el mundo. No sin causa: la vileza humana hace necesaria la celebración cada tanto de tales ceremonias. El 25 de septiembre pasado se reunieron en el auditorio Blumberg de UTEP más de un centenar de personas para escuchar a una mesa de panelistas, y más importante, a un puñado de los verdaderos protagonistas de una de las muchas historias que es la guerra civil española: la tragedia del exilio.
During a challenging year for traditional news media, Borderzine has good news and important milestones to share with readers and supporters. Several new academic and business partnerships will mean publication of more journalism content and personal voces on the topic of borders, be they geographic, personal, political or cultural. With the new partners coming on board, we also anticipate more traffic for the site and increased national visibility for this multimedia bilingual website housed at the University of Texas at El Paso. These accomplishments should also increase credibility for our mission to showcase the best of student journalism about borders while helping to prepare the next generation of multimedia news professionals, and getting recruiters to take notice of student talent with an eye to offering them internships and jobs. Two years after its launch, Borderzine is moving forward on various fronts.
The things that made me drunk with disappointment, challenge and joy are countless—and they all occurred in a period of just 16 weeks last spring after I agreed to teach just one three-credit introductory journalism class.
People are scared to speak, scared to have their picture taken or to even give their name. When I ask people what they think about the drug war, most of them say: “It’s like hearing the weather reports. It happens everyday…”
In fact, it only takes a simple metro ride to get a sense that the idea of “a typical” Parisian woman—or man, for that matter—seems more of a fiction than a reality. If, for instance, you ride the metro from Odeon to Chatelet—two central and important metro exchanges—you will probably see a number of Parisian women who would not match the “typical” description: from college students wearing chador to women wearing Benetton garb, from girls in military fatigues to women in Senegalese kaftans.
Vanessa Romero shares her experiences as a member of Students for Sensible Drug Policy in this second post.
EL PASO — Students for Sensible Drug Policy is an international organization of students who are concerned about the impact drug abuse has on our communities. This organization puts all its energy on awareness and education about our failed drug policies. We feel that the war on drugs, like any other war on an idea, is a failure. It is a waste of time, money, and lives. The United States has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoner population and the majority of those incarcerated are non-violent drug offenders.
EL PASO, Texas — The doctor has an understanding look, a tender look in his eye and I see that he is a man who is moved by his patient’s anguish. He reminds me a little of Brother Juniper, the old comic strip character, because of his tender eyes and the slightly bent-over aspect as he reads the just faxed results of the CAT scan. “Negative,” he says looking up at me and he says it loudly and leans forward and grasps my hand. “Nothing, nada.” He smiles. And I…am thinking of the other examination room just a week earlier when another doctor said, “I’m ordering a CAT scan.
There has been much media coverage about the “Drug War” going on in the United States and in Mexico with no sound solution in sight. How about taking an alternative route, and just legalize the narcotics that drug cartels profit so highly from?
A personal note on the writing of Bloody Battles Batter Business. When I first began writing this story in August of this year the body count was a terrorizing 700, now in the early weeks of December that number has since doubled. I hoped that by the time this story was published some of this violence might have subsided. That “they” would have stopped killing the “bad guys”, and everything would go back to what it once was. Some believe these killings are “surgical” and that only those who are guilty of corruption have fallen.