"The Time Has Come," the Walrus said

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

~"The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found there (1872)

I love this poem. When I graduated from Young Chicago Authors, a senior in high school and the only young Chicago author then who identified herself as a science-fiction and fantasy writer, the Executive Director Bob Boone gave me a box set of Lewis Carroll's famous work. Two volumes of Alice skipping across Wonderland. I still have them of course. I used this poem often with my better half in college...but those are other stories...stories that wait for boiling seas and flying pigs.

Another poem, passed along to me by Nunez Mom years and years ago, is probably more relevant:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The time has come and gone gente. K.Iris has already departed to parts beyond the nether. It is time for Kismet to move on as well.

No worries. If there is anything I've learned to do here it is to stop WAITING to speak up and speak out. As a result, my digital footprint is now gigantor. To pare it down:

You can find my most random thoughts here.
Find me trying to stay alive here.
Tweet me @kismetfour.

And because I truly believe in the the power of radical woman of color publishing, alternative media, transformative writing and witnessing--

--Waiting 2 Speak will remain live...an archive of my growth as an intellectual, an artist, a scholar, a student, a community member, and a woman of color.

I hope that any faults and flaws will be forgiven. They are my own. And I hope for myself that I have learned from them and will take what I've learned into future.

Browse, comment, share, etc. I'll still be following along and I look forward to continuing to engage in conversation with you in other times, spaces and places.

Biz familia,

Kismet

Is Poetry Audiovisual?

I completely missed National Poetry Month (April) but in cleaning out my aggregator I came across this lovely lady Bassey Ikpi (H/T WriteBlack):



Which reminded me of this, passed along to me by Littlest Sis a few weeks ago. Embedding is disabled but her name is Zora Howard, she is performing at the Urban Word NYC Teen Poetry Slam and you can also find here here in this short film by Lisa Russell.

To me these are two interesting and different examples of how poetry can speak. Bassey's poem is powerful spoken. But I would have also liked the time and private space to read it on the page, digest it with my eyes, ruminate and return to this line, or sit back and reflect on how that word fits into the entire stanza and the page. Whereas Zora's poem could possibly be read. But then you lose the power of this little dynamo, the energy of her breath, the movement of her body and the physicality of her "bi-racial hair." Just as reading Bassey on the page you could remove her--slight, black, roundly and delightfully pregnant and singular on the stage--from sight.

If read, the audience/reader stops being confronted with Bassey's body and the immediacy of the poem, the black baby boy soon to be born, recedes. Or at least, our assumption of immediacy--because, of course, that poem could be old, that boy could already be born, he could already be grown, that could actually be a daughter, or it could even be a baby suit which would make it a complete farce and the visual becomes just another prop, a part of the performance of the poem.

If spoken, we lose the opportunity to consider Zora's historical anecdotes. She deserves footnotes.

I love both versions--page and stage.

Still, what do we (the audience) gain and lose in each version? Are there poems that work well in both forms regardless? Are there forms that work better for women (of color) than for men? And how should we (the artist) navigate the intricacies of whichever form we choose?

Happy Mother's Day

Because I was born of a matriarchy.....

...because I have bi-racial hair and while Nunez Mom is a non-violent mujer, Nunez Matriarch definitely gave me a swat or two with her chinelas get me to sit for its combing....

...because they are the reason for my being....

Happy Mother's Day...to Nunez Mom...and to Cuqui, Ma-ma...to Premonition who is a momi-to-be (in a matter of days)...and to all the other querida blogging and real world mommies, too many to mention.

(Picture Credit: "Hija de Yemaya y Ochun" by Yasmin Hernandez, a super bad, political, activist, rooted in raices y la tierra Boricua artista. Read about her here and support her site here.)

ETA: Took out the italics on my Puerto Rican. So I guess I'll owe a post about why soon. (Evolving Boricua Latina Caribeana mindset is the short answer...)

Video: Mara Triangle Maasai Villages Association

Mara Triangle Maasai Villages Association from Joseph Kimojino on Vimeo.

For more information and how to help.

H/T Global Voices Online

Link Love Live: Week of May 6th

I'll start slow and I'll try something new. It's called Link Love Live. Below are some of my favorite links for the week of May 6, 2009 (sorry for the hump day start). All you have to do is keep checking in all week for updates....


Wednesday, May 6, 2009

First Lady Michelle Obama speech at the Time 100 Most Influential People Awards. Grab it here. (JJP)

So there is a link between sexual assault and colonization? Finally acknowledged. (BFP)

Binyavanga Wainaina teaches us How to write about Africa.

"Until," Julie Wallace's Queer Renaissance film-making debut, breaks ground in Atlanta this summer. Read the review by Alexis Pauline Gumbs of BrokenBeautiful Press here.

The best of Vlogging While Black. Pick someone new to subscribe to today. (I'm following TonyaTKO now)


Friday, May 8th, 2009

THIS, a protest by students at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, uses space, art, the internet and general youthful insurgency to make a point about the marginalization of people of color at UM's campus. Check out their blog as they work to create safe spaces. Check out BFP's rethinking and support of the protest here.

New Black Man (Mark Anthony Neal) breaks down the power and problem of today's HBCUs as only a man truly in love with them and the black community can.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

My favorite vlogger, Jay-Smooth of The Illdoctrine, comments on Asher Roth's adorably racist tweet--yes, I call it racism, and yes a post is coming on what the heck we mean when we call someone, anyone racist and why not using that word may be less helpful than using it--about "nappy headed hoes." Kismet is not the biggest fan of his latest album Asleep in the Bread Isle (ETA: Name change - Because I clearly had the less than legal copy) and not just because of his pseudo-date-rape anthem "I Love College." After all, if I can sway with Weezy every once in awhile I can handle Roth's self-deprecating whiteness. I just honestly wasn't that impressed with the wordflow. Or the beats. Or the concept. Or...yeah, you get the picture.

Anyway:






(ETA: Apparently others have strong opinions on Asher Roth but I think Ian Cohen over at Pitchfork really pust his finger on why I was so underwhelmed--and implies hwy there is so much damn hype over him. Huge H/T to Feministe)

In honor of Mother's Day, Lori Gottlieb considers the less warm-and-fuzzy side of writers writing about their mothers.

What is Social Justice to a Slave?

"For those living with some comfort in the First World, the future no longer exists as a common reference point. Yet for human beings, being sane depends on the acknowledgment of a continuity between the long since dead and those waiting to be born. The richer societies are being increasingly deprived of a temporal dimension essential to any spiritual life." --John Berger, “Foreword: To Try and Understand,” in The Algebra of Infinite Justice, by Arundhati Roy (London: Flamingo, 2002), xvii

In the U.S., we've fallen into the dangerous habit of speaking of slavery and segregation as though the words represent some Time Long Past. Slavery as that Troubling Matter of whips and cotton and bent backs and Roots which is thankfully behind us now. Segregation as those hoses, dogs and embarrassing Southern ignorance we finally got rid of (as though Jim Crow was purely a Mississippi Delta phenomenon and racism existed solely below the Mason-Dixon line).

We hardly speak of chattel slavery as the foundation of our economic system, social inequalities, and political radicalism. Of slaves as the first freedom fighters, activists, and community organizers. Of Freedom Riders as part of the legacy of that activism. Of Rosa and Coretta, Etta and Fannie. And these are the well-known names.

We've moved on to More Important Things. Our histories have become stories have become myths mumbled out of obligation to our predecessors instead of out of a recognition that the ghost of the plantation (and the workshop, and the mill, and the kitchen) sits right over our shoulder. We invoke Ann Nixon Cooper as a symbol of a life lived and then ignore those who question the very role and relevance of what that life might mean. We seat a Sojourner in our Capital and celebrate our journey from slaves to citizens, but ask the welfare queen to put her tiara back on because this stimulus is only for "those who did everything right" and you ran your credit card balance just a little too high.

As the recession deepens, words and statues should accompany public policies that consider a legacy of unequal distribution of resources and acknowledge a history of violence and of resilience. But few economists extend their analysis of the current crisis further back than the last decade. Which means the importance of houses--of land itself--to a long since distressed African-American community is dismissed in the scramble for better credit plans and harder stress tests. Which means that black farmers--yes there are still black farmers--continue to clamor for change they can believe in.

Our forgetting extends with each monument and each moment because we desperately want to believe a page has turned and the past is finally presenting us with a clean slate.

But even our blank sheets of paper are bloodstained.

In the meantime, the past roars in the silence.

....

The UN Special Focus Report on the demolition of Palestian neighborhoods in East Jersualem begins simply:

"In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and unilaterally
annexed to its territory 70.5 km2 of the occupied area, which
were subsequently integrated within the Jersualem municipality. This annexation contravenes international law..."

Appropriation of land for "green areas," exorbitant legal fees and fines on Palestinan men and women attempting to block the demolition of their homes or plan construction of new ones, and re-re-zonings of pre-1967 neighborhoods all amount to a systematic effort to displace Palestinan landowners.

The report reads like a lesson in 1930s urban redlining. (Or perhaps "predatory lending in reverse").

...

"In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jihad, which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the communist regime and eventually destabilise it."

The birth of the Taliban as we know it today.

...

On June 12, 1967, Chief Justice Warren delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia:

"This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment."

Overturning the original trial judge's contention that:

"Almight God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with this arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

An uncomfortably familiar argument. And yes...he said malay.


...

This should not even be up for debate (you're a Jack Bauer kind of girl?)

....

It is our responsibility to remember, to research, to honor and re-honor our own dead. But the forgetting? That part isn't entirely our fault. Revisionist history is as American as fried chicken and apple pie. Black people in the U.S. manifest the best and worst of what this country has to offer. Its determined hope, drive and ambition for the future. Its self-centered and viral xenophobia. Its radical love and sense of global citizenship. And its selective amnesia to any and all facts that might restate, reshape, reimagine the case--whatever the case of the moment might be.

This existence, with all of its contradictions, has galvanized us but also threaten to tear us apart by blinding us to the truth.

And what is the truth?

What is social justice to a slave?

To struggle on a daily basis--

to love who we wanted when we wanted, to claim family despite the caprice of market prices, to love the land and hate the lash, to love our children and hate their father, to worship fire-breathing gods and goddesses whose power screamed through our skin that we were the chosen ones

--to live "while we are alive" not after we are dead.

It is our responsibility to remember our dead and to shape a politics that honors the struggles
of our ancestors. Only we can teach our children how to move forward because only we best recognize the potholes our labor pains left behind.

We can't learn from our experience if we are consistently forgetting it.

We can move forward human, sane and full-bodied if instead of relying on ideology or the caprice of this theoryexpertcounselorpoliticianacademic who happens to be center stage right now (yes, even Barack; yes, even little ole me) we rely on the whole of our experience in the modern world. All fraught and fragile 400+ years and of it. And conduct ourselves accordingly.

Because I Dream in Technicolor

Link Love for 12.1.08

NPR's News and Views blog reports that researchers discovered a lost slave ship. The Spanish ship, Trouvadore, is "the only known wreck of a ship engaged in the illegal slave trade." And several residents of the Turks and Caicos islands, where the wreck occured, are descendants of the 192 slaves who survived. Read more about this fascinating story here and here. When I think of this story I think of "No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the Ocean," by Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, which is also the introduction to Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, their edited volume. What do we learn when we do know? Or what do we think we know when know? What can a submerged, centuries old slave ship tell us about slavery in the Atlantic world? And what can't it tell us about the experience of Africans caught in its knot?

The Undercover Black Man introduces us to Navajo woman Radmilla Cody. The daughter of a Navajo woman and an African American man, she was slso Miss Navajo 1997. Also an activist against domestic violence. Go be a fan here.

While looking back through some fun videos (I still get a kick out of Mos Def's "If I Were President") I came across Majora Carter. I am probably late in the game, but Majora is a Macarthur "genius" and is doing green activism in the South Bronx, where my people come from. I collect inspiration and I am adding her to the collection. Listen to her IIWP:



Yonmei at Feminist SF-The Blog! has insightful things to say about why she writes science-fiction and fantasy and why the genre is especially conducive to subverting and resisting gender roles but at the same time finds itself caught in the bind of privilege, power and oppression. At least that is what I take away from it. And I love it. Take what you will from it here.

Ever wonder about that oh so famous Obama logo? An interview with the designers is here.

Blackwell Compass is having an online, social sciences and humanities conference. This is the first of the virtual conference experiments that I think I will attend. It helps that it is free. Check out the call for papers here.

Happy Birthday to Identity Crisis!!!

Have you played in The Common Room yet? If you thought I was uncensored before, check me around these ladies. It is potty mouth central. (Now don't go telling on me!)

That is all for now.

If you can, say your prayers to your deity(s) for those killed in Mumbai--and the terrorists involved who are lost themselves--for those living with or living with someone living with AIDS, and for all those who did not have somewhere to go, food to eat, or someone to share their Thanksgiving holiday with.

InaDWriMo: Success!

Success!

InaDWriMo is over and I can officially say I hit my goal of 20,000 words and then some. I didn't even bother to count because with several fellowship and grant applications in, at about 8000 words each, there was no point. I smashed InaDWriMo!!!!

::bowing to roaring aplauso::

Of course, I'm not really a success because of the special month. It is a recession, I need funding, and the applications just needed to get done. InaDWriMo did get me started though. And setting a monthly goal was a good way to get research done, get reading, and get writing at the same time. Public accountability is the spice of life.

So I'm going to try to keep it going. I'm going to call it Kismet's Push It, because "Push It" is the word I think in my head whenever I want to stop reading what I'm reading and watch Tivo'd re-runs of True Blood instead.

Push it.

Push it I will.

My Push it goal for the month of December--20,000 words again. Several new applications are due the coming months. And same deal as before: follow the progress (or lack of) at Nunez Daughter.

As an aside, I'm going for three blog posts a week here at W2S. I think I leave you guys alone too long. Gotta feed the people.

Feel free to knock on my door and remind me that I owe you goodness: kismetfour[nospam]@gmail.com.

And CONGRATULATIONS to K.Iris for finishing the first draft of her novel! She did her own NanoWriMo and didn't even try :) Yay!!!!!!!!!!!

Dec. 1: World Aids Day 2008

I'll be in the Common Room with the Bad Black Girls commenting, and maybe blogging, about the issue.
Click the image above to pop through. Share stories. Vent. Cry. Laugh. We do it all.

See you there.

Late (for me) but Hilarious

Happy

\
Hobbled over quickly to thank you for your support! Enjoy your meal!

More Prop 8 Bullet Points

I am engaging in the discussion on Prop 8 featured here, here, and here because I don't want to copy and paste comments and I don't know of any other way to get everyone's attention.

::waving frantically from the blogaround crowd to be heard::


And just like identitycrisis and T, right now I can only think about this issue in bullet points:

1.

I wrote that this happens through challenging and conversation, but really how do people come to change their minds about these things? When did /what would it take for you to change your mind about a certain group or type of people?

I have no idea. In planning a black women in the civil rights movement workshop and I was sent back to square one when my ED (Executive Director) reminded me that no one likes to admit when they are oppressed and the young women may not take well to being told so. How do you change someone's mind? When did my mind change? When I was pushed to the wall. But I was lucky--young girls getting pushed to the wall are losing their lives. Sorry....that is for another post....

2.

Did anyone notice that the President-Elect does not support same-sex marriage? (I know it's too soon to start criticizing, so I'll tread lightly.) I watched his speech at the DNC at an ...and marriage for all event. When he mentioned something about all couples being able to see their loved ones in the hospital, the crowd erupted in cheers. I was thinking "did they hear him say he supported same-sex marriage, because I didn't." The VP-Elect explicitly stated in the VP debate that the ticket did not support same-sex marriage. So I'm wondering how they got a pass but the average black and Latino voter was supposed to take a stand for human rights. Reporters were acting suprised that people could vote for Obama and Prop 8. Really?

Not my most proud Obama moment. I saw that too. And I was honestly shocked with Biden stated so explicitely that they did not favor gay marriage. I want to think there are political reasons for this but I think I am giving the Os too much credit. Their support for civil unions in lieu of gay marriage may have a religious edge to it. And this leads me to the meat of my issue with Prop 8, the organizing around it (both for and against), and the Blame the Coloreds rhetoric that followed.....

3.

I saw a sign that says "Marriage is a human right not a heterosexual privilege." Is that true? Is this a legal matter? Is this a religious matter? Is this a moral matter? As a person who has a different moral and/or religious belief than another person what is my legal obligation to that person as a citizen of the United States and a human being? What is my legal obligation to vote for or against something that is in contra to my religious and/or moral obligations?

Dude.

First of, Jasmyne Cannick said it better than I could (sorry for the link, I couldn't find the original LA Times link):

The way I see it, the white gay community is banging its head against the glass ceiling of a room called equality, believing that a breakthrough on marriage will bestow on it parity with heterosexuals. But the right to marry does nothing to address the problems faced by both black gays and black straights. Does someone who is homeless or suffering from HIV but has no healthcare, or newly out of prison and unemployed, really benefit from the right to marry someone of the same sex?

With all of the issues that black and Latina/o communities are dealing with (our women getting killed on the daily, mothers and fathers deported and separated from their children in ICE raids on the daily, our sons funnelled into the prison industrial complex-gang complex-drug complex on the daily, gentrification, public schools getting shat on by indifferent politicians) when and why did marriage become the issue we should fight for?

::pause for disclaimer::

I am absolutely ambivalent about marriage. And as a gender conforming woman who is sexually attracted primarily to men, I have sexual privilege. For this, and a variety of other reasons, I absolutely support gay marriage.

But I have yet to meet anyone--gay, straight or otherwise--who can convince me WHY it is a civil right. And I am perfectly willing to be convinced. On the surface, Loving v. Virginia (1967) doesn't appear to be a civil rights case. Only when you place the matter of black-white marriage in the context of black men being lynched for the illusory crime of white female rape while white men remained unpunished for the same, in the context of black men and women fighting against a system of segregation whose purpose was not to separate the races but to ensure that EVERY SINGLE CONTACT between the races placed people of color in a subordinate position to whites, only when you flip it and consider how race following the mother means that the entire system of racial prejudice (for all brown, red, yellow people) was based on related system of gender oppression--well, now you can begin to see how black-white marriage would not just be a nice thing to have but an actual dig at the system.

Show me that. And I don't mean show me that because I can't find it for myself. Sure I can. But show me that because you need my help. Because you don't assume that because I'm young, black, Puerto Rican and female that I somehow feel your oppression and will respond. Because you--white gay mainstream community--understand that, even though I may have a homophobia ism, your WHITE PRIVILEGE is an ism as well. Show me how you are fighting it. Show me that you understand that there is no justifiable reason for me--mainstream black and Latina/o community--to trust YOU--mainstream white gay community--anymore than there is a reason for me--Kismet--to trust you--white women. Show me because we could use your help making changes in our communities of color--which, by the way, include many, many, many gay and lesbian people of color--and because you want us to build together.

Show me because you understand that we could go back and forth with Oppression Olympics all day but that only helps...well it doesn't help us. Show me because you know how to organize.

At T's spot, Paris commented:

I think one of the issues that I'm concerned with regarding Prop. 8 is why we didn't hear anything about it before Election Day. If the homosexual community wanted to ensure that Prop. 8 did not pass, then why wasn't there more educating their local residents about this law, and rallying and marching before hand. I'm wondering if they were too 'lax and thought there was no way "the state that allows gay marriage will now vote against it."

And identitycrisis mentioned this as well:

How do we teach our children not to even start drawing those lines of division? I read somewhere that people in the No on 8 campaign were told not to go to polling places in churches and schools. How then does the message get to those places that are so critical in shaping people's minds and hearts?

I don't OWE you my vote. I give you my vote (at least in theory, as I am not a California resident) because I understand that all oppression is connected and that my own freedom relies on your being free too. And I understand that making marriage a heterosexual-only institution only feeds into homophobic tendencies already latent in our culture. And if you think I owe you my vote you are playing not into any offended civil rights solidarity you think you and I may have--you are playing into your own white privilege which is what pisses me off most. You must press everyone, all races, all classes, all religions to believe the same way. You must engage with them. Recognizing oppression and privilege isn't automatic, and it is a daily--hourly!--battle to not fall back int the boxes and roles society has set out for us. You want to get stuff done--then get in my face and get stuff done. THAT'S how emancipation occured, that's how Jim Crow fell, hell, that is how Obama got elected.

4.

Now, I can say of sort of understand the sentiment. It sucks to think that just because I'm one religions or one sexual preference or one [insert descriptive adjective here] that I'm oppressing everyone who isn't like me

This is a recent revelation for me--Judeo-Christian religions and their practice are a privilege. I never would have thought of it that way before. I am still unpacking how to speak on that much less how to think. But you tell someone you don't believe in God and 4 times out of 5 you will get into a big debate because the other person does. You tell someone that you practice Wicca and 3 times out of 5 you lose a friend. You try to engage someone on Regla Ocha, Candomble, Santeria or any other variation of the Afro-Atlantic Yoruba religion, and you may be called a member of a cult, told you worship Satan, or simply not taken seriously.

I've been in settings where people bowed their head to say grace--without asking anyone around the table if they were comfortable with that. I've been pressured to say prayers over food when no one knew whether I was Catholic, Muslim or a santera. I've been invited to more churches than I can count and in difficult situations have had a Christian God THRUST in my direction as justification for this difficult time, or that difficult time. I've been asked for prayers--but you don't know who I am praying to. I've seen my Muslim friends have to justify in various conversations why they supposedly don't believe in God. I am currently in an online book group and when the discussion turned to religion it was immediately couched in terms of God, the Old Testament, the New Testament, Job, etc. On an African diaspora piece of literature, among similarly diasporic women, not one considered--yet--couching the religious analysis in terms of Ibo, Islam, Ocha, or even to throw in some of Zora's voodoo and hoodoo.

The point is not whether or not I am Catholic, Protestant, or pagan. I simply point the assumption behind what people in this Judeo-Christian country do without thinking. It is absolutely engrained in us. Just like heterosexuality is. Just like gender conformity--act like a lady! bossy black b*tch!--is. Just like whiteness = political, economic, and social power is. And it can feel just as oppressive as the others if you are even remotely not of the same faith, even if you are questioning, or skeptical. How could you not believe in God/Jesus? The question is posed to us in a million ways every day, even if it is not being asked in those terms.

So--again--I am leery when we say that Judeo-Christian marriage is a civil right. Because now, not only are we back to why I should care about that over attrition rates in schools, but why is it a civil right to play right back into a system of religious privilege? Why isn't it a civil right to have a civil union with a partner and NOT be married? And...unfortunately...if we make it an issue in the context of Judeo-Christian marriage, then don't we have to recognize that churches do actually have the right to say what they want about marriage? Don't we then have towork on organizing not at the state level but at the parish level (which should have been going on all along, but I already spoke on that)?

I have no intelligent conclusion for all of these thoughts. So I will leave it at that.

Ayo - "Life is Real"

Beautiful.

Survival, Violence and Fear

Early in the course I presented “A Litany for Survival” to the students and slowly but surely they began writing their own poems, testifying to and hoping for their own survival in the face of violence. I realized that teaching on a campus that condoned and ignored sexual violence enacted upon and by its students made the act of standing to lead a lecture or sitting to lead a seminar discussion even more scary than my fear of public speaking provided for. And though Audre Lorde’s poetry and essays are often read in isolation (like the rest of literature in the academy) as brilliant products of a brilliant mind, it changed everything for me when I realized that while Audre Lorde was writing the poems that I needed about violence and difference and survival and fear she was a teacher. And she wasn’t teaching just anyone. Audre Lorde was the first black teacher in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York from 1970-1979. This meant she was teaching police officers in full uniform including loaded guns during the most visible period of racist police violence in the history of New York City. No wonder she was an expert in the permutations of fear. Reading Audre Lorde and teaching about trauma at Duke University during the lacrosse “scandal” taught me that teaching, being accountable to a volatile and vulnerable audience of students changes everything. Honesty in that setting requires a poetic act of faith every single time.

UBUNTU focused a large amount of energy on nurturing the stories of women and especially women of color at the colleges in our areas. After all, this entire movement was sparked by the bravery of a black college student who was brave enough to speak out against the violence she had experienced. At the same time, it was very clear to us, that while college classrooms and programming could make a difference in the lives of individual women, the college campus was not a non-violent space nor was it conducive to sustained healing.

Read ALL of it (please!) here.

Only the Prez #1

Welcome to the first issue of "Only the Prez."

Also known as, "Things Only Obama Can Do Lest You Be Wrecked by the Kis."

After all, he is the first black President. People of all backgrounds and ignorance levels will make silly mistakes and try to justify them because, "Heck, Obama did it."

I am just trying to help YOU out.

This installment will be short, sweet, and is meant to forestall the ridiculous that may follow a certain press conference remark made today:

1. Only the Prez can call himself a "mutt."

2. You may not arbitrarily call the mixed-race people around you, including Kismet, mutts.

3. #2 applies no matter your racial or ethnic background (i.e. There is no "Ghetto Pass" on this one. Black folks you are barred too)



Any questions?

Prop 8 Organizing

From the Daily Dish:

One of the most brilliant things about the Obama campaign was that they didn't expect callers and canvassers to be policy wonks. They just said "tell your story, let people know why you're voting for him. Connect with people." I can't help but feel at this point that if the gloves were taken off we could've helped people get a grip on the real issues at stake here, which I happen to think is a matter of soiling the state constitution.

What was even more confounding was the No on 8 campaign's decision to stay away form polling places at churches and schools. First of all, most polling places are at churches and schools, and second, that mentality buys right into the Yes on 8 brainwashing campaign that same sex marriage is going to corrupt our morals and our children. This idiocy was obvious to everyone that I worked with on the campaign. What was going on with the leadership upstairs?!!!

Interesting.

Sidenote: I plan to educate myself on Proposition 8 and 2008 election measures passed. It's a new world folks (I can't get enough of saying that) and we need to fight back when civil rights are denied. Looking here at home (whether home is yourself or your community or your church) is critical.

Because "if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night."

The Travesty of Prop 8 & the Blame the Black Person Game

Dan Savage on "Black Homophobia" in response to the passing of Proposition 8. When you're done there, go here and follow the comments. Don't forget to leave some.

More on Blacks, Latina/os and Proposition 8:

VivirLatino: More Prop 8 Black and Latino Blaming
WOC, Ph.D.: Propositioning Privilege
elle, phd: WTF is Wrong With Us
The Kitchen Table: Blacks and the Passage of Prop 8

A New World brings new struggles and old ones to the fore. Roll up your sleeves, tuck up your skirt, and let's get to work.

[ETA: More commentary. From elle, Kevin, and AJ, plus a Racialicious roundtable here]

The New World

I'm still unsure how to think about what happened yesterday. I'm excited, hopeful, terrified, and overwhelmed. I have finally, I think, stopped crying at every CNN recap, but I still feel so full with all of the historic things that happened. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. Wow. Whew!!!!!! It is so hard to believe.

Yesterday, like most people I know, I woke up and I ran to the TV because I was afraid it was a dream. And I was afraid that something terrible happened in the wee hours of the morning. But everything on Good Morning America was celebratory. In fact, come to find out, Indiana, Missouri, and Ohio went blue for the first time in years. Today, Missouri is still up for grabs by about 6,000 votes, but that only amazes me more. If I ever believed my vote didn't count--and who hasn't?--I am assured now. Every single vote does count. Democracy can work. A black man can be elected President of one of the most virulently racist countries in the world and do so without widespread violence, without riots, without burning crosses on the White House lawn. At least not yet.

I was skeptical, up until the end. Oh, I drink the Koolaid, I don't sip. I supported with money every time I could, and, in the end, with time (which was only a fraction of the time other volunteers spent). I blogged. But I was never fully convinced it would work. I am a student of history. History has said it was possible but never that it was probable. History has never said that when democracy works it is magic, it is not self-evident, and that magic is beautiful but rare.

I was skeptical most of the night. Even when he won Ohio and the volunteers around me erupted in triumph because no Republican candidate has ever won the election without Ohio. As we walked to a post-volunteer election watch party, I remained skeptical. The jubilation around me appeared misplaced, didn't they know what could happen? Didn't they remember 2000 and 2004? Didn't they follow history? ANYTHING could happen.

CNN announced it at eleven o'clock. Barack Obama is projected to be the next President of the United States. And a wave of emotion flooded me. The same wave I am still riding. The same wave I started this post with. I keep cycling back to that moment, that feeling. Wow. Whew! Wow. Wow.

I never believed it could happen. When it did, I damn near lost my mind.

And now what?

Entering Day #2 of election aftermath, the news is still flooded with Obamamania. Obama tapped Rahm Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff. An Appoint Jesse Jackson, Jr. to the Senate Facebook group has started.

On a more personal level, I couldn't stay away from NPR, CNN or C-SPAN. Still can't. I've never been very involved in the nitty-gritty of what some might call formal or traditional politics. But I can't keep away now, and I know how much I'm changed on that level. My involvement, my surprise that the political structure can be used, the knowledge that it is only because of THE PEOPLE PUSHING HARD that it could be used.

Then there was a minor fight with Mr. over the meaning (or respectability) of Jesse Jackson's tears. And a moment of awkwardness at my youth organizing program when my Executive Director noted he'd voted for Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente. Awkwardness for both of us because what did our different choices say about our politics, our radicalism, our ability to, and our willingness to fight for social justice all around?

Then Proposition 8 passed with a majority of African American and Latina/o voters supporting the bill, and similar measures passed in Florida and Arizona. Measures banning gay couples from adopting passed in Arkansas.

Then CNN spoke with young, African American leaders, including South Carolina's Bakari Sellers, but not a woman to be found amongst those tapped.

And it took me two hours to get a cab on Tuesday night. Why? Because cabs were passing black fares for white ones, literally passing black fares and pulling up ten feet away in front of white ones. Over and over--because there were plenty of white ones around and plenty of cabs around. With so many young, excited, presumably monied white people in the streets that night, the economics of racial profiling went into overdrive. Don't believe me? I wouldn't either if I were you. You almost had to see it to believe it. I got home by getting in the way of a cab dropping off his (white) passengers, letting him know I'd been waiting for two hours, and begging him to take me to my destination. He seemed surprised that I'd been waiting so long. Yeah, well so was I.

Is racism dead?



I can see why someone might think so. Talking to Littlest Sis on the phone, absolutely hysterical over the win, barely able to choke out my words, it took me a moment to realize she wasn't nearly so fazed as I was. "Yeah," she finally asked at one point, "We are going to party tonight! What are you doing?"

Me? I'm still trying to breathe.

Right then, I couldn't even imagine partying. And for a moment I was disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm--but it was only a moment. A second of a second actually. Because I started to get excited. I started to see how amazing it must be twenty-something in college with only your dreams ahead of you and the inability to imagine that a more dangerous, sinister, hateful, and violent world ever existed. And I hope it is amazing for my Puerto Rican mother to see me so overwhelmed and excited, but in disbelief and not with a memory of mourning for friends lost, dreams broken, leaders killed.

I can imagine what the world was like for her. I can't even fathom the world my grandmothers lived in. And Littlest Sis will never understand the world I live in. I am B.B. Before Barack. From here on out, the young people in my life--youth organizers, siblings of a certain age, scholar of color mentees, and undergraduate students--are A.B. After Barack.

45 years. Two generations maybe. That close.

Wow. Whew! Wow.

But is racism dead?

No. Anyone who believes that has lost and/or forgotten something in this election. And since other bloggers are outlining the history of this campaign, let's keep it simple and speak from lived experience.

When the youth organizers came into work yesterday, one expressed frustration that her prinicpal got on the loudspeaker to announce Obama's win. Not because she wasn't excited. But because he emphasized how anything is now possible, how now there are no excuses for not achieving.

She understood intrinsically--attending a predominantly black school but enrolled in Advanced Placement courses that are majority white, a youth organizer in the "continent" of southeast DC (the reputed hood of DC hoods)--she understood that racism didn't disappear because Obama navigated its many quandries and secured a victory.

Nothing can diminish the success and power of this moment. We elected a black President, a self-identified black President (not self-identified mixed or Kenyan-American, despite the best efforts of the pundits over the last two years) who is married to a self-identified and accomplished African American woman and has (absolutely gorgeous) African-American daughters.

Now, the way we speak of and think of "race" will have to evolve. The way we understand organizing, politics, elections, and policy in general will have to evolve. The way we understand oppression will have to evolve. Racism and racist structures of oppression haven't disappeared. You can bet a $150,000 wardrobe they are evolving as well, right now, and the battles they wage against us will be subtle. Republicans are the new Klan, Latina/os are the new targets, and the gay community is the new offended. Oppression is the new racism.

But intersectionality is the new social justice. The internet is the new grassroots. Young people are the new electorate.

Welcome to the New World.

X-Posted at YBP





----------------
Now playing: J*Davey - Cowboys & Indians
via FoxyTunes

Hysterical

Barack Obama is our President. 44th. Black.

Wow.

Michelle Obama is our First Lady.

The White House needs a name change.

And I can't seem to stop crying.

Yes We Can.