Día de las Brujas y El Día de los Muertos.
El 27 de Octubre de 2012. Hola. Día de las Brujas is a major celebration in some major cities in the Estados Unidos and around the world. Two cities that come to mind in the EE.UU: West Hollywood and Manhattan have major events to celebrate the day. San Francisco did have an annual event at one time, but no more. Some violence took place at two of our Día de las Brujas events and the politicians—often being nothing but useless (conservative) reactionaries—ended our event entirely with support from the conservative, NIMBY/not-in-my-back-yard residents in the business/residential area where the event was held. The next year, the area where our event had been held (the Castro district) became a police state on el 31 de Octubre with 600 police (isn’t that a bit excessive?) placed in the Castro district and that police state policy continued for the next two years on el 31 de Octubre. Any fool politician can place police in an area. So much for the concept of “Leadership” that politicians often bloviate about. Also, a year after our annual Día de las Brujas event was cancelled, I read that Manhattan gets their puppets for their event from San Francisco (their puppets are made here). When the organizers of their event in Manhattan heard that our event in San Francisco had been permanently cancelled, they said that they don’t operate on Fear in New York and that they would have continued their event regardless. I would too. I agree with Manhattan. But unfortunately, for some time now there have been San Francisco politicians who have been trying to shut down one event after the other (some locals have called it the “war on fun in San Francisco”) in their effort to sanitize and make San Francisco conservative, mainstream, boring and a corporatist City who and for the 1%. They’re doing a pretty good job of it. Any time a conservative politician wants to end something in San Francisco they wrap it in Orwellian Newspeak and sell the idea to the gullible public in the name of, “safety, security, sensible, rationale, reasonable, civil” and other bull shit newspeak language. The sheep hear that propaganda code newspeak language and respond, “that all sounds good to me; who could oppose that?” And the event gets cancelled. The “safety” tactic/agenda is used for many things to shut things down or to oppose things the conservatives don’t want. I’ve seen the “safety” card used repeatedly by the conservatives/right-wing. Why are they constantly catered to?
So after our Día de las Brujas event was cancelled, someone came up with the idea of something called “Home For Halloween.” Ah, isn’t that wonderful! Isn’t that sweet. It sounds so “safe”, so “secure” and “wholesome.” Ugh. It sounds right out of the 1930s. Can’t you hear Bing Crosby or Ethel Merman singing for us about now? Yes, some people are afraid of their own shadow. The idea of this “Home for Halloween” nonsense was that residents were supposed to stay home or go to private parties in people’s homes for Día de las Brujas, instead of corporatist politicians doing their damn job they’re well paid for and actually being a Leader for once and coming up with ways to have a City-wide party event just like West Hollywood or Manhattan do. They can do it, why can’t San Francisco? (“The City That Knows How,” remember that slogan?) But for those who don’t know, there’s a major conservative power grab taking place at this time in San Francisco. That conservative power grab is being accomplished with the constant assistance of the corporatist, conservative, gay, pro-the-wealthy/1%, anti-poor people, anti-homeless people member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for the conservative Castro area. You can read more about San Francisco’s former Día de las Brujas celebrations here.
Dean Johnson Fine Art sent me his tarjetas/cards and posters in Español and Inglés he’s designed for Día de las Brujas y El Día de los Muertos. I especially like the tarjetas with the two rows of calabazas/pumpkins. That’s very unusual.
Also, El Día de los Muertos is a national holiday in México. You can read about that here: Día de los Muertos
So here’s what Dean Johnson Fine Art has created to celebrate Día/Noche de Brujas y El Día de los Muertos. Check them out. Gracias. Chau.—rosa barrio
From Dean Johnson Fine Art:
