The Spirits do not judge you unfairly for your humanity. Your queerness is sacred and divine, your disability is a piece of your holy puzzle and your body is a blessing no matter how it may come.
The Ancestors have lived it, the trees, the hills, the mountains, the sea and the saints have seen it.
The Spirits do not judge you unfairly for your humanity. Imperfection is wholly and entirely perfect.
In the 1930s, we illegally deported 600,000 U.S. citizens because they had Mexican heritage
In downtown Los Angeles during the 1930s, La Placita Catholic church was a social hub for Mexican Americans and immigrants. Immigration agents were well aware of this fact. On February 26th, 1931, they sealed off the area around the church before anyone could realize what was happening and began arresting suspected undocumented immigrants en masse. Families watched in horror as their spouses, friends, and colleagues โ 400 people in total โ were loaded into vans, and eventually shipped back to Mexico. Many of those detained had been in the country so long they didnโt speak Spanish. One man, who had legal status and had his papers on him, tried to intervene. An agent took his papers and made him join the detained. The raid took an hour and fifteen minutes. The mass arrest was meant to send a message: Weโre coming for all of you.
Across the country, in California, Ohio, New York, Illinois, and many other places, hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants were rounded up from public places, and summarily deported. The Depression had created a hunger for easy scapegoats. โA frenzy of anti-Mexican sentimentโ was roiling across the country. In an effort to get rid of Mexicans as quick as possible, immigration agents could not be bothered to differentiate between those who had entered the country legally and those who had not. As Kevin R. Johnson explains in his legal review of the event, โIt is clear today that the conduct of federal, state, and local officials in the campaign violated the legal rights of the persons repatriated, as well as persons of Mexican ancestry.โ When people protested that the raids were unfairly targeting people of Mexican descent, the man in charge of the raids, W.F. Watkins objected, saying that three โOrientalsโ and two Europeans had also been arrested. In total, roughly one million people of Mexican ancestry were deported during that decade โ about a third of the countryโs Mexican population.
Though immigration law is famously byzantine, it is crystal clear on one issue: U.S. born citizens cannot be deported for any reason. But during this mass Mexican deportation, sixty percent of the deportees were U.S. citizens, mostly children who were in fact born in the United States. Because of the speed and recklessness, this mass deportation was actually more of an โethnic cleansing,โ Johnson says, not because the deportees were murdered, but because they were disproportionately targeted, rounded up, and purged because of their race.
Before the Depression, the U.S. had been in uneasy collaboration with Mexican workers, sometimes wanting their labor and other times wanting them out of the country. In the 1920s agri-businessmen lobbied to keep them in, arguing that the industry would fall apart without them.
As Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez explain in their book Decade of Betrayal, the change in policy was largely attributable to William N. Doak, who transformed the tiny, unknown Immigration and Naturalization Services into the bureaucratic behemoth we know it as today. Doak โinstigated a personal vendetta to get rid of the Mexicans,โ they write. For the Mexican community, it was a betrayal of trust โ especially the U.S. citizens and those with legal status. Without warning, a switch had been flipped. They had been told that they were safe, that this was their country, only to have that safety unceremoniously and haphazardly revoked because there was a new white man in office. Mexican news outlets condemned the deportations, and the Mexican government announced plans to deport roughly 7,000 Americans who had overstayed their visas in Mexico in response.
Many of the people who were deported to Mexico, either had never been there, or hadnโt been there in so long that they had no connections and were forced to rebuild a life from scratch in an unfamiliar place. โWhere is Mexico?โ one five-year-old American-citizen said when his father told them of their impending deportation. In 2003, Jose Lopez, a U.S. citizen who had been removed to Michoacan when he was five, testified before the California legislature, โLiving conditions in Mexico were horrible, we lived in utter poverty. My family ate only tortillas and beans for a long time. Sometimes only one meal a day.โ Not long after, both of his parents were dead.
For those who were not deported, the uncertainty of their position was haunting. When would the immigration agents come again? Could they go shopping, to church, or school? One woman described how during this period, her grandfather, terrified of removal despite being a U.S. citizen, never went anywhere, even the corner grocery store, without his passport. When his granddaughter asked him why, he said, โMija, I am just an Indian from Chiapas and they will deport me if they stop me and I donโt have my papers.โ When he died, she buried him with his passport in his pocket.
Some ways to recognize AI generated images (other than counting the fingers!)
Hey folks! Since a lot of people out there are still getting taken in by AI images, I thought I'd do a post to help you spot some common tells in AI generated imagery. (All of these images come from Pixabay.) Since this turned out to be a really long post, I've put the rest of it under the cut.
Unnatural shininess and smoothness
AI generated images frequently have an unnatural smoothness to them. Here's a really obvious example:
These are supposed to be blueberries, but they're way too shiny. They look more like glass than actual fruit!
Here's an example that's a little less obvious:
At first glance, it's easy to miss that this is a procedurally generated image. But if you take a moment and look close, you can see an unnatural smoothness to this image. Compare with this real photograph below:
The real photo has a slight graininess to it, plus the berries themselves display more texture.
Here are more images displaying unnatural smoothness:
Exaggerated facial and body proportions
If a person or animal in an image that appears to be a photograph has cartoonish or caricaturish proportions, that's a sign the image is AI generated.
First, we'll start with a really obvious example. While I don't think the person who had this generated meant for it to be taken as photorealistic, it's still a good example of exaggerated proportions.
Now here's the less obvious example:
If you just glanced at this image, you might think this was a real child. But if you look for a moment longer, you'll notice that her head is slightly too big for her body proportions, and her eyes are slightly too big and round. (And of course, her toes are messed up.)
For comparison, here's a real child:
The real child's head is smaller, and the eyes don't have that cartoony look.
Here's an image of a baby that could pass as real at first glance... until you realize the eyes are too big and round, and it's making Dreamworks face! (Also, the brows and lashes are unnaturally smooth and the skin looks plasticky!)
For comparison, here's a real baby:
Melty-looking detailwork
AI images that are supposed to depict fantasy, divine, and historical figures often feature an extreme level of detailing. But if you look close, you'll see that this detailwork is usually a mess.
Here's a very obvious example:
If you look at her tiara, you can see that the center gem is actually floating above the rest, which is a dead giveaway that this is procedurally generated. Also, her tiara lacks symmetry and evenness where it should have it.
Here's another example:
Again, this is clearly a piece that should have symmetry in the metalwork, but has that uneven melty look so common in AI imagery.
And a less obvious example:
This one isn't as extreme as the others, but if you're familiar with the way AI "melts" details, you can recognize its work. (Also, her right earring is lower than it should be, and where her face is clearly meant to imitate an oil painting, her dress looks like a watercolor painting!)
Meanwhile, here's a real photograph of a tiara:
I'd also like to emphasize here that asymmetry on its own doesn't indicate AI! Many people create asymmetrical designs on purpose. The thing to really watch out for is melty-looking shapes and unevenness in things that shouldn't look melty or uneven.
Unnatural crispness and detail
AI image generators often lean toward high-contrast tones, which frequently makes images look unnaturally crisp. Here's a really obvious example:
Let's compare with a real photo of the Sphinx!
Quite a bit of difference, huh?
This faux Greek statue might be a bit harder:
This appears to depict a Greek-styled statue, but - look at the face! The crispness in the light and shadows gives this away as AI generated. (There's also no staining on the face, even though we see it on the next.)
For comparison, a real statue:
This has turned into a huge post, so I'm gonna call this good for now. Not each and every AI generated image will have these tells, but you'll be able to recognize a lot more AI generated images if you keep them in mind. If you'd like to get even better at recognizing AI generated images, you might go to the website I got them from - Pixabay - and search for "AI generated." Load the pictures at higher resolutions, pay attention to the details, and compare them with human-mage images. While you'll find that many AI generated images are very hard to distinguish from human-made ones, you'll start picking up on more of AI's idiosyncracies.
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