Raza World Visions—A Public Affairs & Cultural Arts Radio Show

Raza World Visions radio show explores the UCSB manifestation of the largest student movement since the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s. Student encampments spreading throughout the US have involved a range of discourses and actions regarding the perennially polarizing issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the Hamas attack on Jewish civilian and military personnel, and Israeli military and settler continuation of apartheid and ruthless collective punishment of Palestinians, these student protests have become a flashpoint for competing interpretations and traumas. This third of three shows responsibly wades into the morass by focusing on the autonomous UCSB encampment, with a dialogue with Chiana/o, Labor, and Social Movement Studies Scholar Ralph Armbruster Sandoval. 

Raza World Visions radio show explores the UCSB manifestation of the largest student movement since the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s. Student encampments spreading throughout the US have involved a range of discourses and actions regarding the perennially polarizing issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the Hamas attack on Jewish civilian and military personnel, and Israeli military and settler continuation of apartheid and ruthless collective punishment of Palestinians, these student protests have become a flashpoint for competing interpretations and traumas. This second of three shows responsibly wades into the morass by focusing on the autonomous UCSB encampment, with profiles of participants and their motives. All interviewees are anonymous by request, with featured music by Macklemore and poetry by Palestinian Zuhair Hamad in honor of Jewish American peace and Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie who was murdered by the Israeli Army in the 2003 Israeli invasion of Rafa.

Raza World Visions radio show explores the UCSB manifestation of the largest student
movement since the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s. Student encampments
spreading throughout the nation have involved a range of discourses and actions regarding the
perennially polarizing issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the Hamas attack on Jewish
civilian and military personnel, and Israeli military and settler continuation of apartheid and
ruthless collective punishment of Palestinians, these student protests have become a
flashpoint for competing interpretations and traumas. This first of three shows responsibly
wades into the morass by focusing on the autonomous UCSB encampment. All interviewees
are anonymous by request, with featured poetry and musical accompaniment by assassinated
Palestinian poet and Shakespeare scholar Refaat Alarreer sung by Jordanian Farah Shiraj, and
Palestinian poet in exile Rafeef Ziadah.

Raza World Visions radio show presents a specially-curated strike mixtape in solidarity with the 48,000 Academic Student Workers on strike throughout the UC System’s ten campuses. This show follows the three-part series that featured union workers discussing the current strike and preceding 2020-2021 Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) wildcat strike. Drawing inspiration from intersecting unionists, this show features pro-union country music by Dolly Parton, Kenny Chesney, and George Straight; various Latinx genres by Las Cafeteras, Teatro Campesino, Joan Baez, and Los Tigres del Norte; rock by Billy Bragg and Rage Against the Machine; ballads by Tracey Chapman; Hip Hop by Michael Rousse; and L’Internationale sung in Spanish and Portuguese by workers of la Confederación Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Trabajadores Estatales. 

Raza World Visions radio show joins the picket line in support of striking student unions! Following the unprecedented strike by over 48,000 academic workers throughout the University of California System’s ten campuses, Raza World Visions continues its three-part series on the strike’s causes, demands, and precursors. This third show focuses on UCSC graduate student Carlos Cruz, a 2020-2021 Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) wildcat striker who helped expand the strike outward towards a broad-based, multi-dimensional mass movement. He breaks it down alongside discussion of the persecution he endured. Musical interludes include Marcel Cartier, Ozomatli, José de Molina, and workers of la Confederación Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Trabajadores Estatales.

Raza World Visions radio show joins the picket line in support of striking student unions! Following the unprecedented vote by 98% of University of California UAW Academic Student Union members—that’s 36,558 workers!—to go on strike if contract negotiations with the UC System fail, this second of three shows on student unions is devoted to the Cost of Living Allowance (COLA) Strike in 2020-2021. While cut short by the COVID pandemic, the COLA wildcat strike represents a revolutionary turn in the student union movement. UCSB Sociology graduate student Emily Fox was involved in the UCSB COLA strike from the beginning, and provides personal reflections and insights on COLA’s lasting impact. Musical interludes include Billy Bragg, Natalie Douglas, Las Cafeteras, and Bobbie McGee. 

Raza World Visions radio show prepares to join the picket line in support of student unions! As negotiations trudge on, student unions have voted and are preparing to strike for dignity, justice, fair labor conditions, and livable wages. United Auto Workers Union member and negotiator Janna Haider and international student and union member Somak Mukherjee break it all down. As we listen and learn about lingering unresolved grievances such as inadequate pay and unfair working conditions for student workers, fellow travelers and allies Michael Rouse, Teatro Campesino, Tracy Chapman, and Las Cafeteras remind them and us that they are not alone! Workers of the world unite! 

Raza World Visions radio show was hijacked by gabacha/os posing as Raza. While investigations are under way, we decided to preserve evidence of cultural appropriation, salient bigotries, and, well, cultural cross-dressing that ain’t all bad. Suspects include The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Beaumonts, and Loco Gringos (you can take creative writing with their lead singer). The Hickoids complicate Latinesca music by responsibly exploring white privilege and complex positionalities (wish other mixed-race folks would do the same). Dwight Yoakum, Augie Mayers and His Valley Vatos, and Doug Sahm and Sir Douglass Quintet show you can be white and down with Raza in non-appropriative ways. The Texas Tornados model brilliant cultural fusions, with Beck and Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass reminding us that music of all sorts and sources is art, which always has transcendent possibilities.

Raza World Visions radio show jumps into the controversies of gangster rap with a fresh take on the revolutionary possibilities of lumpen barrio cholo and chola hip hop intellectuals. The show explores various iterations of the concept of gangster revolutionaries—from the contradictions to the possibilities. These oral bards present various syntheses of the material circumstances that we must understand as we simultaneously struggle to synthesize our own selves into new revolutionary beings. The show’s hip hop homeboyz and homegurlz include Kid Frost, Capone, NSanity, Lighter Shade of Brown, La La Romero, Vel the Wonder, Xochiquetzal Kalpolteteo, Lady Pinks, Sir Dyno, Clika 1, and Lil Rob. 

Raza World Visions radio show takes us back to our Movimiento roots con la música de nuestra lucha que sigue hoy en día. Conjunto Aztlán grounds us in the indigenous roots of El Movimiento with its opening ceremonia, and quickly jumps into conjunto nueva cancion. Los Alvarados, Joan Baez, y El Teatro Campesino take us through Movimiento classics. Jesus “Chuy” Negrete and Ramón Chunky Sánchez—both oral bards of La Onda Chicana—take us along for a ride of key moments and campaigns that together ground the movement in labor and land struggles. And we close with the Brown Sound crossover songs by Thee Midnighters and El Chicano that extend the movimiento far and wide.