Indians in the Family: A People’s Journey

This past year as part of a personal search into my family’s indigenous roots I “interviewed” relatives, in Mexico City and in Texas, and asked them about our ancestry. I read several history and anthropology books about Mexican indigenous peoples. I also visited sites and museums explaining Indigenous civilization. One of the most impressive was the Museum of the Central Aztec Temple in Mexico City, the Museo del Templo Mayor. I recommend a visit to this site, which has some of the most beautiful pieces of art and accounts of the Aztec civilization, including the origin story involving the deities Coyolxauhqui and Huitzilopochtli.

My uncle in Mexico, my mother’s brother, told me that, at least on his side of the family, our forebears were Gran Chichimeca tribal people, from what are now the states of Aguascalientes and Zacatecas in central Mexico. He prefaced his comments by saying that after traveling throughout the length and breadth of Mexico three times, he had come to the conclusion that we were “from the most savage, most primitive, most barbaric Indians–the Gran Chichimeca “. My uncle laughed as he said this, expressing his underlying feelings of embarrassment and internalized oppression. (I later read that the term chichimeca actually did mean “dirty uncivilized dog” in the Nahua language).

Thirty years after the Spaniards invaded and took over Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital in 1521, they started a second conflict. The discovery of silver north of Mexico City compelled them to move soldiers and settlers into a new area, coming up against the Chichimeca people. A very violent 50 years-long frontier war began, with the Spanish setting up mining outposts and the Natives resisting and holding on to their lands, their way of life. Apparently these Indians fought hard and fiercely and with great determination so as to not be subdued. The geographical location of the Gran Chichimeca—what is now Zacatecas-Aguascalientes—strongly suggests that they might be my family’s ancestors. For nearly 400 years indigenous groups were moved around and relocated and migrated throughout the land but if we have a homeland this region is it.

 For many years my brother has been very deliberate about investigating our indigenous roots as Chicanos, looking into our family’s connections with tribal peoples. He told me that because of our build and physical features on my father’s side of the family, we could be descended from Navajo, Apache or Comanche people, who are from what is now the US Southwest. He speculates that we’re descendents of individuals who were captured and enslaved, then taken to work the silver mines to the south, in Mexico. This might explain the connections between my mother and father’s sides of the family who were from the same region in Mexico.

 A book I read this past year, Guillermo Bonfil-Batalla’s “El Mexico Profundo: Reclaiming a Civilization”, 1987, explained some things I had long suspected and that other Native thinkers had argued. (In the 1970’s a native American professor, Jack D. Forbes, held that Mexicanos/Chicanos are de-tribalized, “Hispanicized”, acculturated Indigenous peoples. He called us genizaros, Indians with Spanish names, language and religion).

 Bonfil-Batalla reports that Indigenous people in Mexico have been there a long, long time.  “According to the information available, human beings have been living in Mexico for at least thirty-thousand years.” P.4

 Starting about 5,000 years ago or so those peoples built the societies and cultures that we now know as Mexican. And they spread that civilization all over the mountains, deserts, jungles, plains, and shores of a vast area.

 “There are hardly any virgin landscapes in Mexico. One always finds evidence of human presence, of the ancient passing of others over these lands.” P. 10

What I think is the most interesting about his writings is a core conclusion, that ethnically, culturally and spiritually Mexicans are an indigenous society.

According to Bonfil-Batalla,

“It is common to say that Mexico is a mestizo country both biologically and culturally. In terms of physical features, the mixture can be seen in large sectors of the population, although the intensity varies and Indian traits predominate in many groups. This can be attributed in the first place to the size of the original Indian population, which was much larger than the European, African, and other groups that participated in the racial fusion…

“It is evident that the Indian genetic contribution was the fundamental one in the physical makeup of the Mexican population. This is an undeniable reality…that racial fusion did not occur in a uniform fashion and that we are far from being the racial democracy that is often proclaimed…” P. 15-16

 The Mexican people—and this means Chicanos too—are basically Indigenous in our ethnicity, our ways of life, our day-to-day attitudes, spirituality and practices. “Mestizo” actually means Indigenous with an overlay of Catholicism, Spanish language and Westernized confusion.

Bonfil-Batalla also describes what we call internalized oppression and how it got laid on us. This is very valuable information because it gives a historical context for our situation as Chicanos. 

“The recent history of Mexico, that of the last five hundred years, is the story of permanent confrontation between those attempting to direct the country toward the path of Western civilization and those, rooted in Mesoamerican ways of life, who resist. The first plan arrived with the European invaders but was not abandoned with independence. The new groups in power, first the creoles and later the mestizos, never renounced the westernization plan. They still have not renounced it.

“…The final accomplishment of the colonization, when the colonized finally accepted internally the inferiority that the colonizers attributed to them, renounced their own identity, and assumed another and different one.” p. 20

This confusion, this sense of being less-than, or feeling despair or whatever negative, unhappy attitudes we shoulder, is cultural contagion, the imposition of oppressive patterns on a people and the “acceptance” of those patterns by the targeted group.

 De-Indianization has been achieved when, ideologically, the population stops considering itself Indian, even though the life way may continue as before. Such communities are now Indian without knowing that they are Indian.” P. 46

Bonfil-Batalla was very clear that even with the terrible assaults on Indigenous peoples the basic, underlying cultural basis is too strong for the westernizing plan to win completely; however, as we know, the price paid for resisting was lots and lots of oppression and suffering and confusion. He was optimistic that the peoples would reclaim and reinvigorate their ways of life. (He died before the Chiapas Zapatista uprising of 1994, a moment when that resistance came out very starkly.)

 “The peoples of the Mexico profundo continually create and reinforce their own, private sphere of control. They take foreign cultural elements and put them at their service; they cyclically perform the collective acts that are a way of expressing and renewing their own identity. They remain silent or they rebel, according to strategies refined by centuries of resistance.” P. Xvii

Bonfil-Batalla recognized that to be Indian can mean many things, including being urban and “modern”. His ideas about what it means to be a present day Mexican/Chicano people brings out what is at stake for our individual and collective future and survival. To be Indigenous in the 21^st century is to be part of the present day reality…without losing yourself to the oppressive culture. For example, Mexico City, with its 28 million residents is a huge Indian metropolis.

In this case one must suppose that the only true Indian is one who is illiterate and miserably poor, and who does not speak Spanish or employ Western rationality. Anyone who does these things ceases to be Indian. Can there be a clearer example of the persistence of colonial ideology?” p. 147

Finally, Mexican customs, food and language, the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the day of the dead, our attachment to family, our sociability and “clannishness”, our art and music and poetry, respect for elders and modesty, our seemingly “self-defeating” resistance to Anglo-European ways, our confusion and questioning of the system, all these are signs of our not giving up who we are.

“…All these forms of resistance are really facets of the same permanent, tenacious struggle. Each community and all of them in conjunction have fought to continue being themselves, not to give up being the protagonists of their own history.” P. Xix

In Re-evaluation Co-counseling it is believed that we can and will discharge our hurts completely, reclaiming our identities, healing our families and communities.

 

Remembering a Friend

REFLECTIONS ON ELENA

I’ve asked my dear brother Gil to read this letter to those of you attending this memorial.
Antes de todo, les doy el pesame a los padres de Elena. Les mando un fuerte abrazo de cariño y de dolor
compartido. Y les pido que me perdonen el no haber podido venir a esta reunion de amigos y familia para hacer homenaje a Elena.
Tambien a sus papas quiero expresarles un profundo agradecimiento por haber traido su hija a nuestras vidas. Como se puede ver fue una persona de gran Corazon y Espiritu quien tuvo un gran impacto en
su entorno, supo ganarse muchos amigos y queridos de todas partes del mundo. Indudablemente esto tiene que
ver con el modo de ser de la familia Castañeda. Ahora, gracias a nuestra hermana Elena, nosotros tambien
somos sus hijos, formamos parte de su familia.

I met Elena in the early 1990s when I was in graduate school at Berkeley. We hung out together, laughed and laughed and laughed, and got to really love each other. I have memories of camping with her and Gil, of eating and partying, and hanging out at her place near the university.

For me, Elena was a very welcoming Chicana sister from Chicago; a brown, beautiful, strong, Mexican Indian
carnala, with jet-black hair and a big, wide toothy grin. I remember being impressed with how tough and resourceful she was. An independent woman, she was sanding and finishing floors at that time, getting herself together to go back to school.

I know that her life was not without pain and, without disclosing things shared in counseling sessions, she carried the loss of her brother and the reality of being away from her parents which was a source of constant doubt and reflection. I recall that a recurring question for her was: should I stay in Berkeley or return to be with my parents in Chicago? We talked all the time about relationships, about work, about politics.
And as for politics, so important a topic in Berkeley and in the Bay Area, she was sharp, sharp, sharp. She was crystal clear and way ahead of the times in terms of environmental and health and gender politics and the Chicano/Indigenous movement. Mr. and Mrs. Castañeda, you may realize this already but Elena was a very advanced and deep woman politically, spiritually, intellectually. For me personally, it was natural that she and I, as prietos and Indios, had an affinity, a love for each other. Of course we had to find each other. She became my sister and I her brother.

Elena was no slouch as a thinker. A searcher, a free spirit, she was an excellent Counselor. And she was a hard worker, a class-conscious person and generous to a fault.
One more thing: there was a side to her personality that made it impossible for us not to click, something guaranteed to draw us together, and that was her jokester side.
Anybody who spent time with her soon found out how goofy, humorous, cheerful, upbeat, lighthearted and silly she could be. I was often the victim of her wit and wisecracks and merciless teasing.
I loved her because she was as irreverent as hell and I will forever miss her risa loca, really the laugh of an eternal young girl who loves life.
Did our joking verge on bad taste? You better believe it. That type of deadly humor was how we coped with this harsh, irrational society with its senselessness and injustices.

Years later, after I had moved away, I returned for a visit and we reconnected. We hung out for a few hours in Emeryville and then said goodbye at a café on Dwight and San Pablo. Gray haired now and with more years under our belts, the youthful Elena was ever present. Her vibrancy, vitality and playfulness never stopped shining. That was about a year ago.

So now, carnalita de la piel morena y los ojos chinos, you’re gone. Since I have a hard time believing in an afterlife, what I’ll do is hang on to the memories of your rich laughter and your smiling Indian eyes and your un-breakable human spirit. Those memories can never be taken away.

I close with a cautionary reminder, that
Linda G. has the right idea: we need to hang out, make the time to visit friends while we still have each other. Otherwise we remain with our regrets of not having checked in enough, not having said enough, not having spent the time. Don’t put it off too long, for the Fates have a way of messing with us when we delay and procrastinate. We need to stay connected with one another.

from West Harlem in New York City,
un abrazote,
Andrés Mares Muro

OPENING ADDRESS GIVEN AT 1ST HARLEM TENANTS CONVENTION, JUNE 1, 2007

Welcome to everyone tonight to this very important event: the First Harlem Tenants’ Convention.
Fausto, one of the organizers for this weekend event put together by the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center, was telling me today that there are daily more and more cases of people being evicted in our neighborhood.
He talked about how the landlords have no respect for some basic social values and no qualms about throwing elderly people and kids out into the street.
In school I learned that in other times and places people had some basic human rights that were respected. For example in England and France in the 17th & 18th centuries the townships had to guarantee its citizens who were unemployed food and shelter. They set aside monies to care for everyone in the village.
Those values are gone now. Someone once remarked that the number one law of the capitalist economic system is “you OR I, not you AND I”.
There’s a big gap between the brutal, heartless profit orientation of the for-profit system we live under and Human Rights.
Housing, economic security, education, healthcare are some of the values that are presently threatened.
One of our members, Epifania, said it clearly at one of our meetings: we are living under a roof that’s not guaranteed or secure.
In the history of New York City there have been politicians who fought for the people.
Fiorello LaGuardia was one, a populist mayor from the 1930’s who fought for the people, for immigrants, for workers. He tried to solve the problems of affordable housing and social security.
Rent control and rent stabilization came out of that period.
But now we tenants are alone. We have nobody under this current administration really fighting on our behalf. Manhattan is turning into an playground and enclave for yuppies and the present city government is completely in favor of it.
The landlords and developers we face are powerful. They have financial power and laws in their favor and the most of the politicians and they are organized.
Their gentrification plans to remove working people from their neighborhoods can only be resisted when we organize and unite.
We have to count on ourselves on our efforts, our organizing. This weekend is an important part of that effort. We are the majority of this city.
Our challenges:
1) to bring in young adults with families that are just starting out.
2) make solidarity links with other tenant groups throughout the city—East Harlem, the Bronx, other neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn

THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE THIS WEEKEND AND KEEP FIGHTING FOR WHATS RIGHT.

In defense of the Seattle rebels (Or nurturing one’s inner anarchist) [December 1999]

December 9, 1999

“The ugliness in the afternoon”

A couple of us from the national offices of the Fellowship of Reconciliation went to Seattle to participate in the protests against the World Trade Organization ministerial Summit. We visited with Western Washington FOR folks with whom we co-sponsored an event on the Global War System. For the four full days we were there we practically lived in the streets, marching in peaceful demonstrations, attending educational fora and assemblies, as well as facing tear gas attacks, anti-riot police pursuit on foot, and dealing with the threat of being arrested, getting hit by rubber pellets, riot sticks, or pepper spray. By mid-day on November 30^th, the first day of the WTO meeting, it became clear that police, while arresting demonstrators, were mostly intent on dispersing people with force and weapons. That evening a state of emergency was declared with a 7pm curfew; as night approached armed National Guard soldiers dressed in fatigues were rolled in. Most have seen media images of the street actions that night and the following days. There has been a universal condemnation of the destructive acts of black clad youth who trashed businesses in the 15 to 20 square block downtown area. The WTO, business people, government officials, and the TV and print media, from the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to national dailies like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, all excoriated the rioters, describing them as criminals, hooligans, thugs. And progressive activists—clergy, environmentalists, unions—lined up in a similar chorus. “We certainly don’t support violence or property destruction,” said Naomi Walker, a spokeswoman for John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO. Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club: “…We deplore the violence exhibited in downtown Seattle, and it is usurping the real story of 50,000 people who stood together to demand respect for workers and the environment…Violence only obscures our message. A handful of anarchists should not drown out the message of thousands of peaceful marchers.” Others were more vehement in their feelings towards the “violence” against property: Medea Benjamin, a leader with Global Exchange, a San Francisco based group said,“Here we are protecting Nike, McDonald’s, the Gap and all the while I’m thinking, ‘Where are the police? These anarchists should have been arrested,’” (New York Times, December 2, 1999). Mike Dolan of Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen joined in with these observations: “…These nonviolent direct actions were early disrupted and corrupted by small bands of vandals who turned over some newspaper boxes and apparently smashed a couple of windows downtown. The police failed to identify and arrest these few anti-social individuals…Why didn’t the police identify and arrest the vandals early on? If they had, the ugliness in the afternoon and my own substantial discomfort would have been avoided. We didn’t come to trash Seattle, we came here to expose the trashy reputation of the WTO.” (World Trade Observer, Dec.1,1999). In the days since there have been further accusations and speculations as to the anarchists being government agent provocateurs. Will no one defend the anarchists? Were their actions as reprehensible and anti-social as their critics claim? Or are these young rebels our brothers and sisters, not saboteurs of the movement but revolutionary spirits who we should embrace for their willingness to express a righteous anger and repudiation of a social order based on greed, systemic violence and oppression of a global majority?

Mass civil disobedience as a new stage of struggle can transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the larger society, but not wantonly destructive. Finally, it is a device of social action that is more difficult for the government to quell by superior force. –Dr. Martin Luther King, “Where do we go from here?”  

There were three major groupings and accompanying actions in the Seattle protests, constituencies and events which overlapped.One was a huge coalition of labor, peace activists, environmentalists and church and religious folks. These groups made up the bulk of the protesters, especially on the day of labor’s officially sanctioned march when some 30,000 plus participants walked down from Seattle Center to the downtown area near the WTO meeting site. Prominent among the unions were the International Longshore Workers, Service Employees Industrial Union, and Steelworkers.Secondly, there was the Direct Action Network (DAN) with far fewer people, a mostly young crowd, but with the mission of going from symbolic protest to nonviolently gumming up the ministerial works, that is, monkey wrenching the WTO.Lastly, there was the small core of anarchists, reportedly from Oregon, who’s aim was to assault the sacred cow of American corporate culture. Because at this point in history no citizens group can actually directly affect the decision-making of the powerful and mighty, nearly everyone in the political movements relies to a certain extent upon symbolism as the expression of protest. The rich and the powerful pull the strings while we bear witness and issue JeremiadsYet while one large grouping in Seattle was for the symbolism of moral protest, of dissent and policy disapproval (labor, churches, the fair traders, the enviros), and while another was for the symbolism inherent in actually interrupting the ministerial wrong doers with nonviolent civil disobedience (even if only for a day), the anarchists were about the symbolism of confronting and challenging capitalism first hand, the economy based on profit-making and run by multinational corporations. Theirs was a call for countercultural change, for radically altering our very way of life. They seek this partly by destroying oppressive symbols, the corporate logo. Their watchword is direct action versus solely symbolic gestures of dissent. In a sense, their rhetoric anticipates the society captured by the title of David Korten’s latest book, “the Post-Corporate world: Life After Capitalism”.This is why groups of committed anarchists in affinity groups went for the retail shopping mall, for Nike Town, the Radisson, Sheraton, Starbucks, the Gap, FAO Schwarz-Barbie Center, McDonalds, the places where commodities are displayed and sold, the sites where we all participate in the culture of consumption (unfortunately the Microsoft campus was far away on the other side of Lake Washington). I’ll remember for a long time to come a drizzling December afternoon in downtown Seattle, close to the Pike Place market, getting tear gassed  and chased by the police moments after having been read the riot act. Scary and terrifying and yet exhilarating, it was a moment when average people held the streets, reclaiming public space for hours—normally, most urban space is run by commercial interests or the state but for a few days in Seattle it was contested ground, the res publica. Thanks to DAN and the anarchists, democracy was in the streets. Were the anarchists in Seattle ultra-extremist adventurers endangering the success of the anti-WTO protests or were they prophets? Quite arguably their actions defined the outer parameters of the anti-WTO week in Seattle.For many years the peace and justice and religious based movements have issued pronouncements calling for social justice and rejecting materialism and greed, statements against the soullessness of consumer society and for equitable human relations. These are prophetic claims. It could be argued that the secular anarchists took these pronouncements to heart, making literal assaults on the sites of consumerism and alienated living, direct acts against the commodity culture. Ironically, their practice, their actions, jibe with a repudiation of consumerism, materialism, the valuing of things over people, the marketplace as God. That nearly everyone else disavows the attacks on property, some even calling for the state to arrest rebellious youth, is revealing, suggesting an agreement or consensus on the sanctity of corporate property (Some critics of the rebels even devoted themselves to cleaning up the graffiti left on the storefronts).The anarchists went beyond the liberal call for reforming capitalism a-la-Clinton; acting as maximalists, they made a symbolic bid for a total, not a partial change. The anti-corporate symbolism prefigures the future many of us want: one with no more exploitation in both the south and northern hemispheres, without concentrated economic power, without CEO’s or bosses, without classes or wage slavery, and environmentally rational. Theirs is a criticism against not just of the WTO or the reigning governments but of the system of markets and profit-making as a whole. For many of us their symbolism was more appealing than the “legitimate” protests; their imagination grander than the reforming of one corporate entity or blocking the proceedings of one bad institution. Young, daring, courageous, pure, almost beautiful in their sinister black garb, the anarchist youth took their gamble without asking for any help or even solidarity from the rest of us (on the contrary, they are universally reproached).  They brought to mind the spirit of theWatts rebellion of 1965, the Detroit fires of ’67, Paris and Chicago ’68, South Central Los Angeles ’92, and, also of course, the widespread disapproval these earlier street actions also garnered.The Seattle anarchists raise certain questions for pacifists which could be couched in this way: when Civil Rights desegregationists broke Jim Crow laws which many Southerners revered or believed in fervently, were they being anti-social? When anti-Vietnam war resisters spilled blood on government documents such as selective service records or when they burnt draft cards, were these actions violent? When peacemakers take a hammer to a warhead of a nuclear missile, is this vandalism or thuggery? Should we condemn the destruction of an outlet for a corporate chain such as Starbucks, Nike, the Gap, etc.? Are we implicitly supporting an unjust international economic arrangement based on super-exploitation abroad and exploitation at home by calling for the arrests of anti-authoritarian youths?  

Methods and Motivations  There was marked contrast between the atmosphere and attitude at the established peace churches in downtown Seattle and the DAN gathering point at Capitol Hill, between the middle-aged, middle-class “reasonable, practical” voices—unions, churches, peace movement, environmentalists, etc.—and the anarchic (self-directed, autonomous) groups of youth defying the procedures of the WTO, private property and social proprieties (upon which unjust orders rest). To its credit the Direct Action Network skillfully employed a tactic of interrupting business as usual by breaking with the safe choreography of orchestrated or pre-arranged protests sanctioned by the powers that be, the officially approved etiquette of routinized protests. The actions were refreshing, invigorating, insofar as they subverted the usual types of demos where often everything’s worked out with the police chief down to the last busload of arrestees. The inadequacy of mainstream pacifist response to the police brutality was illustrated by a particularly disappointing scene which unfolded on Wednesday morning at Seneca and Fifth streets on the day after the major street actions. A silent religious procession which stopped just opposite the phalanx of police came across as acquiescent, if not submissive. Perhaps this is all we can do at this time…yet, maybe those of us who are more invested in the system, more “institutional”, can still support the actions of youth willing to confront core systemic values. It may be that our organizational commitments to things such as the 501C3 status, stock porfolios, endowment funding, mortgages, internal hierarchical structures, and the like may prevent us from acting directly on behalf of justice; it may not necessarily compel us to hold back from supporting those who are ready to take on the struggle more militantly. Ultimately, the demonstrations belonged exclusively to neither the peacemakers, environmentalists, labor unions, the religious OR the anarchists—no one has a copyright or monopoly on the streets. In Seattle there was lots of organization but minimal orchestration, or pre-programmed ritual; there was no predictable outcome to the moments when protesters held the line. Public Citizen put out the call to come to Seattle to protest the WTO but it was the masses of people acting on their own, spontaneously, who opened up the public spaces for real. At certain points it seemed that there were no official leaders only crowds. 

In the final analysis there are only three ways of effecting social change: through persuasion of the men who hold power in the existing system, through a conspiratorial coup d’etat, or through the open mobilization of the people against the prevailing order. The first is the technique of liberals, the second of one type of anarchist, the third of most other radicals.—Sidney Lens, “Radicalism in America” 

And to the anarchists—Is rioting all you can do? Is this your sole tactic and method? Are you a “one trick” pony?On the night that of the trashing of the Starbucks on Stewart street one of thousands of arguments between individuals was heard. A woman carpenter, wearing her hardhat and boots, decried the store bashing. “That store could’ve been one I built! All of Seattle was built by labor!” Seattle is as unionist a town as they come. In 1919 some 60,000 workers went out on a general strike over labor rights, bringing everything to a standstill. It was also the site for big battles with Boeing corporation. In the future, if the movement is able to build and grow, it’ll take the mighty arm of organized labor to make a real revolution against corporate capital, not just the street actions of a minority opinion within a minority counterculture. The riddle is how to make that equation change.Can you be anarchists of the Spanish type, the 1930’s National Confederation of Labor of Catalonia, or America’s own Industrial Workers of the World, who were inextricably involved with wage workers? (“Labor is entitled to the value it creates-Abolish wage slavery”—IWW slogan seen in the big march) It’s necessary to explain your actions more, the whys to your actions.The challenge to the anarchists (actually to all of us) is how you make your message legible to average folk. If you hold no dialogue with others and do no or little outreach to average working people, you will be beating your arms helplessly against the walls of our common prison.

Finally, RACE MATTERS.Like the rest of the Seattle protests, the direct action and anarchist contingents were mostly white, pointing out yet again the polarized state of the progressive movements. It’s clear to me that if the participants in the battle of Seattle had been tortilla, rice and bean eaters, or of African descent, there would have been deaths; there is ample historical precedent that points to the lethalness for people of color acting in large groups on their own behalf. White skin remains a privilege. And yet, it was still an honor for me as a working class, man of color to have been there those rainy days in Seattle side by side with valiant idealistic rebels who understood the meaning of this gathering of international officials setting up the economic agenda for you and me for the next period. The battle in Seattle was a great way to end this year and this century, to close the millenium; it represents definite hope for the future.     

Hello world!