Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Author Profile picture
Jul 20, 2023 14 tweets 3 min read Read on X
This quote, from the @nytimes review of the OPPENHEIMER film: "He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near-desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico"...

It was inhabited by Hispanos. They were given less than 24 hr to leave. Their farms bulldozed. 1
Many of those families had been on the same land for centuries. The Oppenheimer's crew literally shot all their livestock through the head and bulldozed them. People fled on foot with nowhere to go. Land rich, money poor. Their land seized by the government. 2
All of the Hispano NM men who were displaced by the labs later were hired to work with beryllium by Oppenheimer. The white men got protective gear. The Hispano men did not. 3
The Hispano men all died of berylliosis. These were US citizens, folks. Their land taken, animals killed, farms bulldozed, forced to work for the people who took everything from them, and killed by those people. 4
For 20 years I have been trying to sell a film based on the story of Loyda Martinez, a remarkable whistleblower whose family's land was seized for the labs. Her dad was one of the men who died from beryllium exposure at the labs. She later went to work there too. 5
She is a computer whiz who rose to the top of her department at Los Alamos. Then she started digging for info on the Hispano men the labs killed, like her father. She filed a class action lawsuit, and won. 6
The first Hispano governor of NM, Bill Richardson, appointed Loyda to run the state's human rights commission. She then filed a second class-action against Los Alamos, on behalf of women scientists not paid fairly. 7
But, no. We want more films about the "complex and troubled" "heroic" white men, who conducted their GENIUS in a "virtually unpopulated" place. These are ALL lies. This is mythology in service to white supremacy and the military industrial complex, masquerading as "nuanced." 8
Because of what the labs did to the local Hispano people in northern NM, our communities now have the highest rates of heroin overdose deaths in the nation. The generational trauma and forced poverty is outrageous. We need the real stories of Oppenheimer to be told. END
Nolan, Hollywood, the NY Times - all of them should be ashamed. Someone should fund my Loyda Martinez film. She's like @ErinBrockovich - bubbly, beautiful, was a cheerleader & computer genius. Loyda's is the story we SHOULD be hearing. But we get Hot fucking Cheetohs.
Loyda Martinez. KNOW HER NAME. One of the bravest and most important women in American history. Image
Loyda's mother and father. Her dad was driven off their family's land when Oppenheimer and the US government seized it to make the labs. They then hired him, made him work with berrylium without protective gear (his white bosses got PPE) and he died of berryliosis, like many did. Image
Apologies - corrections. Richardson was the 6th Hispano governor of the US State of NM.
Plesse watch

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More from @AlisaValdesRod1

Oct 27
This is all nothing new for me. I was impeached as freshman class president, by the high school administration, in 1983, for organizing a sit-in at the mall to protest nuclear proliferation instead of hosting the bake sale the teacher advisor had suggested.
At that same school that same year, I was shoved by Mr. Morrow, the algebra teacher, when I stopped standing for the pledge of allegiance, to protest the US invasion of Grenada and the US support of Apartheid in South Africa. I began ditching school to read Gogol & Tolstoy.
Same year, I refused to write an expository paragraph on demand in honor's English because the form seemed needlessly repetitive. I wrote a poem about sunlight through aspens instead. The teacher, Ms. Wilson, humiliated me in front of the class by calling me stupid. Expelled me.
Read 14 tweets
Oct 25
Within an hour of me posting my true views on the genocide on Gaza, Universal Content Productions called to inform me the studio will no longer be developing my novel, THE DIRTY GIRLS SOCIAL CLUB, for a TV series.

This is the world we inhabit.

Please support my books.
They are pretending there is some legal chain of title issue. But there isn't. They would never have signed the deal if there were. They magically pulled one out of their legal team within an hour of me saying I can't support any candidate that supports genocide anywhere.
This, on the eve of my historical novel about genocide in NM in 1500s and 1600s coming out next month, is mindblowingly disturbing.

Nothing has changed.

Our voices do not matter and will be silenced.
Read 8 tweets
Oct 14
The most fascinating thing?

HLA-B*15:01 is a genetic variant that protects people from being symptomatic with covid infection. They breeze through it. No symptoms

HLA-DRB1*11:04, on the same loci, damns people to the hell of Long Covid.

Miniscule shifts. Massive differences.
These genes control, among other things, how a pathogen is seen by the immune system. Imagine the sars2 virus is a narcissistic abuser. HLA-B*15-01 is like, "Oh HELL nah," kicks his ass to the curb. HLA-DRB1*11:04 is like, "I dunno, I like a little danger. I can change him."
What's even worse is HLA-DRB1*11:04 also tells her immune system Sars2 reminds her of her ex. You remember him, right? Harmless cold virus? Fixed him. "Just use the same strategy with the new guy." But new guy doesn't move out. He moves in. He destroys the house. Kills the pets.
Read 4 tweets
Oct 13
This is the most reliable genetic marker for Long Covid susceptibility they found. Lo and behold, I have it. Exactly as they described. Image
Image
However, I do NOT have the second genetic risk factor, which might explain why my Long Covid, while debilitating, has been less severe than other people's. Image
The gene most commonly associated with Long Covid risk appears most frequently in Southern Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, according to chatgpt. Image
Read 4 tweets
Oct 12
This is live on 23&Me. Image
Fwiw, by doing a shit-ton of science reading and diving into my own genomic sequences (in hooes of figuring out why I was still sick), I came VERY CLOSE to this same conclusion in 2022.

This absolutely points to Long Covid as a virus-induced autoimmune disease, like so many others. Here are some of the other diseases associated with a variant of this gene. Lots of overlap with LC.

.sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
Read 4 tweets
Jul 15
I've written a biopic of classical composer Fanny Mendelssohn. I'm trying to find a producer and director now. Fanny lived in the early and mid 1800s, in Berlin. As research, I read books of letters she and her family sent to one another. A 🧵...
They lived in a repressive and ominous time. Every member of the Mendelssohn household was a genius, talented, products of the enlightenment. Witty, compassionate, insightful. Fanny's father, Abraham...
...was a banker and philanthropist. Prussian law limited the jobs Jewish men could hold, and banking, seen as abhorrent, was one of the few allowed. Abraham's father was Moses Mendelssohn, a Jewish philosopher and theologian of the Enlightenment...
Read 26 tweets

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