EL TECOLOTE (SAN FRANCISCO) -- Just a few days ago, a former student from San Francisco State University, my now friend and fellow actress Lourdes Alarcón, who is a cultural activist and mother of two wonderful kids, wrote on social media: “Normality was nothing if not social injustice. Work, work, work, yet still unable to afford rent, lacking health insurance, eating rice and beans, beans and rice. That was our Latino reality! We definitely need a change. We cannot go back to that normality.”
I quote Lourdes because her words resonate in a very real way with me. Perhaps it is easier to wax poetic about these current circumstances. Poetry, music, theatre, dancing, apparently non-essential activities in our consumeristic society, suddenly appear as true allies in our longing for positive outcomes. But “rice and beans” surely resonate louder.