Category: Strong Women

Chingonas, Parenting, Soria versus Oxnard School District, Strong Women, Vote

Why My Mother Still Votes and My Son Won’t

Mona Alvarado Frazier

To be more accurate, the title of this post should read “Why my mother and former mother in law still vote and my son won’t,” but that is too long of a title. 


A couple of weeks ago the deadline to register to vote passed. My nineteen year old didn’t register. I was more than a little miffed. Doesn’t he know that it’s a privilege to vote, is he lazy, doesn’t he care? I waited to ask him these questions until l could ask without biting his head off. 


His reasons: 

My vote doesn’t count…it’s a corrupt system… I don’t believe in either candidate.

I didn’t want to debate each reason. It’s too late for this year. But I couldn’t let this issue go without a few words (okay, more than a few). So this is what I said:
Your 75 and 85-year-old nana’s (grandmothers) vote. Nana Maria, is legally blind and although it takes a couple of days and help to go through the entire ballot, she votes. Nana Catalina is an ongoing presence on Facebook, diligently advocating for Obama. They both feel voting is a privilege and an opportunity. Nana Maria grew up during the depression. She vividly remembers food lines, the attack on Pearl Harbor, air raid drills, segregation, migrant work, marching with Cesar Chavez, and voter registration. Nana Catalina lived through most of the same era’s. In 1968 her husband and other parents sued the school district over its policy of segregation. The case went to the US Supreme Court. They won. Both grandma’s are strong women, bien chingonas.


flickr/common usage
Both of them recognize that other men and women fought for a vote and that fight was not easy. They’ve seen and felt corruption. Yes, some decisions made by certain U.S. Presidents disappointed them but they believed that their vote counted. Your grandfathers, rest their souls, voted, and your parents vote. So what makes you so indifferent? Is it because you have grown up in an era pelted by twenty-four hour news of corruption, violence, and war around the world which has quashed belief in a better world. Is that why you have a “glass is half empty” perspective, or is it that you believe a cause is futile when you don’t get the outcome that you want? Was it my parenting? Your reasons are confusing to me. You believe in protecting the environment, animal rights, and the golden rule. You’re a committed vegan for crying out loud. I don’t know the reason you didn’t register to vote or why only 62% of male young adults your age registered to vote in the 2008 election. Maybe it’s because you haven’t struggled, economically or socially.You haven’t lived in poverty, worked at hard labor, or encountered blatant racism. Are those the reasons? That did get a very slight nod and “maybe,” from you. Perhaps I should have shared this quote with you years ago:

“We don’t need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation.”-Cesar E. Chavez

Your older brother votes and he’s much more cynical than you are-in all honesty. He says teens your age don’t know or take time to know the issues and how they affect your future. I don’t know if that’s true. You know so much more about global warming, GMO’s, and nutrition than I do. You have studied issues before.
Maybe contemporary life has sucked hope from your horizon, maybe you don’t have faith in the voting system-many don’t. I’m not saying you’re wrong for feeling the way that you do. I’m trying to understand your reasons for not registering to vote. I’m trying to have you understand why others do vote. 
 I want you, and the other 48 % of non registered voters your age, to care enough to do something about a system you believe is corrupt or broken. I want you to know the gumption your grandmother’s still have at their age. I want you to care enough to utilize the power of a vote. 

R.Ganzer/Creative Commons Lic.

I don’t know if anything I said this morning changed your mind or not. Bottom line is that by not participating in your right to vote, you will have to live with the consequences of decisions made by others.

I so want you to understand that amid your feelings about the condition of the world and our U.S. society that things can get better.

For your grandmother’s generation, for mine and your own, I want you to have hope. I want you to vote.

Breast cancer, Health, October Breast Cancer Awareness, Pink Ribbons, Strong Women, Wisdom

Why Pink Makes Me Cringe

Mona Alvarado Frazier

It’s not Pink, the singer, that stirs up ambivalent feelings in my soul, it’s the color pink linked to October’s Breast Cancer Awareness month. It’s all the pink stuff beyond the commemorative ribbons. It’s pink deodorant containers, buckets of chicken, yogurt lids, pens, bottles, garden tools, and such. I can’t even look at Pepto-Bismol bottles anymore.

Before sticks and stones are thrown my way, please hear me out.  The end of next month marks the 7thyear from the last chemo session I had. That’s the date I considered myself cancer free. 

There was an eighth session scheduled in mid-December for chemo but I was so friggin’ tired of being tired, having pain, throwing up, (fill in any adjective for miserable) that I skipped it. I wanted to make tamales with my family, as I had since I was a child, and I wanted to celebrate Christmas in my living room, not from my bed. 

So I said “F-K It,” I’m not doing this anymore.


I still don’t know whether I based my decision on fatigue or it was a grasp at self-determination. Maybe it was both. Probably. I do remember feeling particularly powerless at that time. There are the ambivalent feelings of life and death, hair and no hair, sorrow and hope, regrets and plans, hell days and heaven days. Load these into a blender, push the button, and you might get a sense of how I felt.
gettyimages K.Tanier
Pink products and words “Breast Cancer” remind me of this time in my life. This is where my ambivalence comes from; this is when I cringe.

I’m not ungrateful for my life, or breast cancer research, or awareness of breast cancer, 

because I am and so are my three children, but it’s all that dang PINK everywhere in October, when the autumn colors of golden, bronze, pumpkin, and burgundy naturally abounds.


PINK is in my supermarket, the drug store, magazines, T.V., clothing stores, pet stores, bakery, and on my toilet paper wrap. (Now wasn’t that bolded PINK just a little annoying?) That’s what I see in October, flutters of PINK everywhere. ANNOYING.

Breast cancer sucks. Marketing breast cancer double sucks.


My ambivalence also has to do with the fact that in my small world and community I keep encountering numerous cases of breast cancer in women ranging from 28 to 70 years of age. I’m sure you’ve heard of many people battling the disease within your circle of family/friends/acquaintances. 

How can this be after years of research, millions of dollars, and awareness campaigns? Have we been operating on lies? 


I am not saying that we should stop donating to campaigns of our choice (especially my favorite Dr. Susan Love’s research for the cause of breast cancer, thus the cure). 

Au contraire. I’m still going to do my annual Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society. I’m still going to talk with women who are going through BC treatment- if they ask. I’m going to don my khaki hat with the pink ribbon (the one I wore for 6 months on my baldhead) and the black and pink one my sister traded for her own hat on a bus in London.

I will continue to advocate for people to be aware of how to minimize their risk to cancer and find affordable health care. I’m going to do those things and hope you show support by doing these things too. 

I’m just one survivor/thriver trying to communicate my feelings. Maybe a day will come, soon I hope, when Pink no longer stirs up my stuff and becomes just another color, as the lyrics in this video so aptly describes. 

 

                                                    I can hope. 


UPDATE: Jennifer (down there in the comment section) referred me to a site where I met fella sisters who are sick of marketing the “Pink.” Check out Think Before You Pink. They bring up valid points: 

As we head into November’s election, we urge everyone concerned about breast cancer to demand representatives from every state support the 2012 Breast Cancer Action Mandate for Government Action. We need to move beyond “awareness” and pink ribbons to demand candidates and elected officials take real action on breast cancer, by initiating and supporting independent research and strong regulation to turn the tide on this epidemic. 

Thank you for listening.