Bakalao Stars at Smokey Joe's

Last Friday night I went to see Bakalao Stars play at Smokey Joe's in Charlotte. Smokey Joe's is a dive bar/music venue, walls covered with old concert posters and beer signs. Bakalao Stars came dressed Hawaiian style to match the sandy beach- themed outdoors patio of the bar (although they played inside).







The crowd was small but enthusiastic-



The lead singer from Tropic Culture joined them onstage for a couple of numbers:

Tax Breaks and Wage Theft

If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you may have noticed there has been a lot of discussion about taxes, specifically regarding what to do about the Bush-era tax cuts set to expire at the end of this year. President Obama wants to keep the tax cuts in place for what he terms the 'middle-class,' families making $250,000/year or less, and revert to pre-2001 tax levels for those making more than $250,000/year. Republicans, on the other hand, argue that 'raising' taxes on this upper income bracket above $250,000 would hurt the economy because many of these people are small business owners who, if taxed at a higher rate, would not expand their businesses or hire new employees, thus exacerbating high unemployment levels. Moreover, Republicans argue that small business owners aren't hiring now because of a lingering uncertainty about whether their taxes will climb. The Obama administration has countered with proposals targeting small businesses with incentives and funds that would supposedly offset the coming rise in tax rates. And so we would appear to have a political debate about tax policy.

Sidebar: Does anybody really think that someone making $240,000 is middle-class? That's a hell of a lot of money to me.

John Boehner plays working man...



According to the US Government's Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, small businesses employ about half of US workers (at least of those not working on farms or for the government)and, between 1993-2009, created about 65 percent of new jobs (http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf). The same source classifies small businesses as firms employing 500 people of less.

Yet, I would like to take a step back here and ask, what makes small business owners so special? I believe both sides of this debate have attached themselves to a romanticized figure of the small businessman, who, as a rugged and entreprenuerial individual, if only were it not for the other side's thick-headed policies, would be able to overcome great obstacles and gladly behave with munificience towards his employees and their familes. This Guy who put the pop in Mom and Pop, needs help, whether its government assistance or the desire that the government should just leave him alone. He (in my observation, this is pretty clear-cut gendered figure) and his unwavering work ethic harken back to those early days of American history when frontiersmen set off into the woods and made something of themselves with their bare hands.



In reality, there is nothing inherently good or bad about a small business owner, just as there is nothing inherently good or bad about a large corporation. Rather, it is their actions and relationships, their position in relation to political and economic structures, that determine this. Gigantic corporations might be evil (they often are) say, because they pollute the Gulf of Mexico, but internal HR policies and a history of lawsuits might mean that they actually fairly compensate and insure workers and attempt to give back to the community. Small businesses, while they surely can't release destruction like a Hallibuton or BP, can fail to provide health insurance to workers or discriminate against certain classes of workers. Bigger, or smaller, is not always better (or worse).

I suppose someone could make a counterargument here along the lines of, "Hey, big corporations get tax breaks all the time, so why shouldn't small businesses owners get relief?" Touche!



Which brings me to the second theme- wage theft. A few days ago, I was talking with two undocumented Mexican men who work in the construction industry. These men are hard workers and they give back to the community, a fact I can attest to because they have volunteered to help move heavy furniture, carry supplies out in the hot sun, and paint walls for a local non-profit in Charlotte. They also are struggling to make ends meet. At the same time they aren't taking jobs away from "hard-working Americans" because no jobs in construction are to be had, they are owed significant sums of money from contractors who hired them to work jobs and then never paid up. This means they can't pay their rent and bills in a house they share with their families, including several children. One contractor owes these two men, and several of their coworkers, over $7000 each for a painting gig near Charlotte. Another contractor neglected to pay them over $11,000 each after they traveled to Boston to work on houses there. When I spoke with a person who advises clients at the Latin American Coalition on wage theft issues, she remarked that these two gentlemen are not alone. My conversation was just the tip of the iceberg of hundreds of cases of wage theft they see yearly. Contractors at job sites subcontract to other businesses who hire workers, then underpay or abscond with these workers' wages. It is left to the worker to sift through the multiple layers of contractors, to pursue legal action in small claims court, or to hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit, all the more difficult if you are here illegally, don't speak English as your first language, and are broke and falling into debt.



Who are these contractors perpetuating wage theft? Why, small business owners, of course! (Corporations engage in wage theft too; Wal-Mart come to mind.) So while politicians lionize the small business owner, we should keep in mind the explotation, the paternalism, and the off-the-books nature of many small businesses. If small businesses are given a tax break or incentives, maybe there should be a provision that they won't receive money until they can prove they have paid all their employees all their wages for the past year. Or that they have to comply with OSHA standards in the workplace and provide health insurance for all employees to be eligible?

Last Weekend

This past weekend I managed to go see several bands play, although there were also several performances I ended up missing. On Friday night I went uptown to Chima to listen Reinaldo Brahm and his group play Brazilian music (Sorry, no pictures this time). I didn't stay too late, because I had already planned to wake up early and go see the band Dorian Gris play at a festival, "Rock the Block," in Winston-Salem. It was a bright sunny day, but unfortunately no one was out and about at 12 noon for the show. Here are some photos, including of the empty amphitheatre.







Later in the day, Baco played and few more folks were listening.



On Sunday, I attended the Club Dominicano de Charlotte's annual end of summer party at Park Road Park. After some difficulties with the sound system, Miami band Los Reyes Tipicos played some perico ripiao. They were energetic, but please, it's comical when you spend 20 minutes telling the sound guy to keep turning up the mics to max level- and then when you play every note sounds distorted and tinny.



DS Evolution played next. These guys are on tour around the US and abroad and on the cusp of making it big. They spit rhymes while mixing in bachata and merengue. Their promotor, correcting me, said their style is musica urbana, not reggaeton...



Bachata Flow came on stage next. These guys continue to impress, especially the drummer and lead guitar player.





Leydy Bonilla joined Bachata Flow for a set on songs.



All in all an entertaining musical weekend.

Leydy Bonilla article

Last Sunday, the Charlotte Observer published an article on Charlotte-based merengue singer Leydy Bonilla. Mark Kemp, who has written extensively on Southern music, rock, and other things (often for Rolling Stone), wrote the article.
Here's the link:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/09/12/1677116/a-voice-that-carries.html

El Grito in Charlotte

On Sunday, I went to McAlpine Creek Park in Charlotte for an event organized by the local Spanish radio stations. "El Grito" is modeled after ceremonies and festivities that happen across Mexico on the evening of September 15. Around midnight on this day in 1810 the priest Miguel Hidalgo gave the cry that started the movement that eventually led to Mexico's independence from Spain. 200 years later, Mexican immigrants in North Carolina celebrate this legacy with music, dance, food, and a bit of pagaentry. Here are some photos with commentary.

Grupo Apasionado opened up the day. They were passable.



Alejandro Galvez brings handmade toys for kids of all ages to play with in his Juguetelandia.



Local dance group Cielito Lindo performed some folkloric dances.





Salazar Band played a competent set. They kept up the energy and sang a few extra to fill time for a band that cancelled.



Afterwards they posed backstage:



Rey Norteno took the stage and played some corridos. I think these guys show potential.





A local mariachi band waiting backstage...



And then onstage-



Local promotor Alex Ruiz lipsynched his way through a set. Enough said.



By late afternoon, the crowd was filed in...





Mexican Consul Carlos Flores Vizcarra gave the grito and raised the flag



Lalo Mora (formerly of Los Invasores de Nuevo Leon) was the headliner. He has a voice Janis Joplin would have killed for- gritty with undertones of tequila. He worked the crowd and any women he could find nearby.





La Raza

Remembering and Forgetting

There was beautiful weather as I walked the few blocks from my apartment at 140th and Broadway to my job at Jackie Robinson Park (the site of the old Polo Grounds) that September 11. And by beautiful I mean 70 degrees, bright and sunny, zero humidity, a slight breeze which after a stagnant New York summer means relief anf joy that the seasons are finally changing. I was looking forward to my day, to giving a morning training, finishing up some paperwork, and then going to vote in my first primary election in New York. I arrived at the park's recreation center to give my training in job skills to a group of welfare-to-work recipients. as I was starting the training, one of my coworkers, a manager at the center, pulled me out of the session to show me what was on TV.



On a local news channel we saw live images of smoke billowing from one of the World Trade Center towers and they kept replaying the images of a plane plowing into the tower. At first I thought, "wow, what a horrible accident," but then we saw another plane crash into the second tower, got reports that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington, DC and that a fourth plane was somewhere up in the air unaccounted for... and so the slow realization that something was amiss. Soon, the towers collapsed.

Looking back, what seems incredible is how I proceeded for several minutes, calmly, returning to the training, informing the class what had happened, cancelling the class, but telling them what to study for our nect meeting, and even reminding them to go vote. Although I had a knot of dread in my stomach, and I knew things were serious because I had called my boss and she told me not to come down to our main office on 61st Street but to go home instead, it wasn't until I walked the hill up 145 Street and I could see down Fredrick Douglass Ave a furious pyre of smoke and dust rising 9 miles south at the bottom of Manhattan that it really hit me.

The buildings were gone. I had little personal connection to the towers, I had never even been up in them. Like many, I used them to orient myself when I got lost in the meandering streets of the West Village. I had seen buildings demolished, like Atlanta's old Fulton County Stadium in controled explosions, but this was chaos, with people falling, shards of glass, and plumes of toxic smoke drifting over Brooklyn.



I spent the rest of the day holed up in my apartment. I talked to my mom, who was freaking out in her own conspiritorial way. I talked to my dad, after almost a year of not talking to him. I heard from a friend,(now my wife) Daliz, who lived in San Francisco and was trying to find her dad who worked downtown near the World Trade Center. I took a break from the somber news reports and walked down to the Hudson River, where thousands of people in suits and ties were walking miles up Riverside Drive trying to get home.

Now when you read or watch the news, or even in academic circles, many talk about the world pre and post 9-11. As if the world suddenly changed, which it did at least in New York City. But I think the jury is still out on this point.

First, the death toll. Over 2,000 people died on September 11, 2001 but does it compare to the 20,000 who died in an earthquake in India in February 2001, or the 17,000 who died in an earthquake in Izmit, Turkey in 1999? 9/11 was a man-made destructive event, terrorism from an external enemy, but does it compare with the backstabbing neglect our government wrought upon its own citizens after Hurricane Katrina? Or the man-made disaster of slums and subhuman living standards that resulted in Haiti losing over 230,000 people?

Second, how does this September 11 compare with that other September 11 (1973) in Chile, when a US-backed coup d'etat deposed Salvador Allende and led to the rise of Augusto Pinochet as dictator? Thousands were disappeared, tortured and killed. That September 11 marked a new era of dirty wars and totalitarian military states throughout Latin America, most often with US complicity and support.

In my job training class that day, there were several Muslims- immigrants from Pakistan and the Middle East (one was named Mohammed) along with folks from Latin America, African-Americans, and whites. All were just as shocked as I was, speechless, worried about their children in schools in Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn. Now we debate whether to put a community center near the World Trade Center site. They were and continue to be New Yorkers just as much as me, and they deserve to be treated a citizens of this city without hatred or malice.

Orquesta Mayor at Cosmo's Cafe

Last weekend Daliz and my brother Ben and his girlfiend Callie were in town and on Sunday we went to see local salsa band Orquesta Mayor play at Cosmo's Cafe in Ballyntyne. Although we mistakenly showed up two hours early, we stuck around and heard some jumping music and took a few turns on the dance floor.
Here are some photos:

Orquesta Mayor playing some old-school salsa classics-




The dance floor-



Daliz-



Ben and Callie-