The Reality Dysfunction - Unscripted/Unsilenced

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction, Dr. Ernesto Mireles is joined by Scott Russell Duncan, Colton Campbell and Alex Garcia fellow thinkers and insurgent storytellers to dive deep into Alex Rivera’s prophetic 2008 film Sleep Dealer. What begins as a conversation about drones, borders, and labor quickly becomes a powerful indictment of settler colonialism, digital commodification, and the war on memory. We explore the film’s dystopian vision of disconnected laborers—plugged into machines across borders—as a mirror of today’s racialized gig economy. Through Xicanx Gothic, racialized horror, and speculative fiction, the panel traces how Sleep Dealer flips the narrative from assimilation to ancestral return. From the sacred milpa to neural implants, from water theft to resistance, this episode asks: What happens when we name the machine—and choose to plant instead of plug in? If you’ve ever questioned the cost of survival in a system built to erase you, or wondered what decolonial science fiction might sound like in Spanglish, this one’s for you.

🎙️ First Gen Podcast | Adan & Pauline sit down with Drs. Manny Preciado & Ernesto Mireles to talk academia, hustle, and what brought them to NAU. Plus, their top advice for first-gen students — and the real secret to success. Don’t miss it!

Adan and Pauline open up about their first year and talk about how things have developed from the first semester to the second semester. Email Adan and Pauline directly at dysfunctionalfirstgen@gmail.com.

POWER HOUSE EPISODE! First Gen Podcasters Pauline and Adan talk politics and belonging in their most recent podcast. Their take on the impending (threatened) ICE raids and deportations. This one is a banger. Share far and wide.

In this episode Adan and Pauline discuss their first winter break, returning to campus and the existential dread of switching majors.

Join Ernesto Ayala is the Vice Chair for the Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida. Join him as he checks in weekly to talk about the Partido, organizing, activism and growing up in the Movement.

Soe and Owahee join The Reality Dysfunction Podcast as regulars with the Anonymously Famous series. Powerful stories to be told.

In this episode Pauline and Adan talk about their backgrounds and the support of their families as the began their journey through higher education. Producer: Ernesto Mireles

This week Dr. Ernesto, Pauline and Adan talk about the recent election of Donald Trump and among other things his promise to end the Department of Education.

In this episode Dr. Ernesto, talks with Ren Manning the co-director of BorderLinks in Tucson, AZ. BorderLinks is a community-based organization where people collectively learn, teach, reflect, share resources, and organize for justice in the borderlands. Through popular education rooted in place and lived experience, BorderLinks and community partners inspire and ignite action to transform unjust border and (im)migration laws and conditions. We belong to movements for social transformation & collective liberation. https://www.borderlinks.org/

In this episode I want to introduce you to Adan and Pauline. Two first year students, please take a quick listen to our first conversation. We plan to record on Friday's and post by Monday so that there will be new fresh content on a regular basis. I want to thank all of you who have hung in there with the Reality Dysfunction this far and we're also really excited to continue this conversation about Chicano culture and Chicano politics into the 21st century. In this new series I'll be working with students at Northern Arizona University, specifically 1st generation college students like myself, to have on-going conversations about their experiences and coming to campus, the changes that they see in themselves and the opportunities that they have to explore their history and their culture at a greater depth.

This is a recording of a talk I thought I had lost. I gave this lecture on Nov. 15, 2014, at the Prescott College Masters Symposium. They never asked me back? The title of the talk is "Why Peace is Impossible." I hope you enjoy it.

This presentation was given on August 15, 2024, over Zoom. It is a collaboration between the Chicano Liberation Committee of Denver, CO., and the Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida. Below is a description of the talk. This file is the presentation. Another file with the discussion will also be uploaded. The video of this meeting will be uploaded to YouTube and we will put the link to that in this description when it is. "Aztlan represents more than a political stance; it is a declaration of Xicano identity and a call for resistance against settler colonial oppression. Aztlan embodies Xicano heritage, struggle, and a political vision for a future where our people are free from the constraints of a system never designed to serve us."

Short informational on the benefits of building a political party for the Xicana/o/x community.

Learn more about the history of Aztlan.

An idea I've been kicking around. Xicana/o/x spend so much time examining history - which is important. I think sometimes we forget that we're tomorrow's history. What happened 50 years ago is important but so is what's happening right now. Be in the moment, right?

This episodes talks about how the current narratives questioning Xicano Indigeneity most likely originate with long term U.S. domestic counterinsurgency campaigns designed to depoliticize indigenous populations.

Insurgency is defined as a form of resistance against colonial or occupying forces.

Could those who label Aztlan as a tool of settler colonialism actually be long term government agents running a very sophisticated psyops in the Chicano community because they are worried about changing demographics in favor of Mexican Americans in the US and are trying to find a way to eliminate irredentist moves within the borders of the US.

From Aztlan to Palestine is a presentation that examines the intersections between the Palestinian liberation struggle and the Chicano liberation struggle in the United States. Using first hand experience and documents from the Raza Unida Party archive Ernesto Ayala describes in detail the similarities between both peoples histories and social movements showing how Aztlan and Palestina are closer than one would ever imagine.