With gratitude to my 200 most regular readers

image is from here

It appears that the world is spinning increasingly towards horrific destruction, despite the efforts of so many decent people to call the richest, whitest, most male supremacist criminals to account.

I find that in such times isolation and alienation are sources of depression and despondency.

Together we join together to resist, to challenge, and to radically transform our world.

Thank you for being part of my world.

Love to each and every one of you.

The Lynching of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman: a perspective

image of George Zimmerman (left) and Trayvon Martin (right) is from here

What follows was written by Carolyn Edgar of CNN and by Michael Skolnick of GlobalGrind. I found these excerpts posted together at Racialicious. I have inserted my own commentary in bold and brackets.

Trayvon Martin was a teenaged boy who was walking home from a convenience store. He was not engaged in an unlawful activity. [Other than being Black in the US and walking in a place where non-Blacks live.] He was in a place where he had a right to be – near the home of his father’s fiancée. [He should have had the right to be there.] George Zimmerman followed him [read: stalked him with the intention of doing harm], even after being told by the 911 dispatcher not to. [His fragrant disregard for the counsel of the 911 dispatcher demonstrates to me that he was wanting some form of public attention, or applause, for what he was about to do.] Zimmerman left his vehicle holding a loaded gun and began pursuing Martin on foot. It is plausible to infer that Zimmerman, not Martin, initiated the attack. The tapes indicate that Zimmerman may have been the aggressor in initiating contact with Martin. ["Plausible"? "May have been"? In what moral universe does disregarding the advice of someone trained to deal with crime and crisis, and instead stalking--with a deadly weapon--an innocent person, NOT constitute "initiating an attack"? How could a boy walking from a store where he purchased Skittles to the home of family constitute, and then screaming for help when his live was threatened, constitute "intitiating an attack"? The boy, by all accounts, was not seeking to engage in any way with the virulently white supremacist George Zimmerman. Would anyone think that a Black or Brown man similarly going after a white boy armed with Skittles would be regarded as anything other than behaving with an intent to kill?] Assuming the published reports are true, Martin, not Zimmerman, was exercising his lawful right to “stand his ground and meet force with force” by engaging in an altercation with Zimmerman. [Florida apparently has a law which allows (wealthier and whiter) people to murder (poorer and darker) people who are in their neighborhood if deemed "threatening". But last I heard, carrying Skittles and minding one's own business, such as by talking with a girlfriend on the phone, isn't threatening behavior to residents of a neighborhood.]

By questioning why Martin didn’t simply stop and answer Zimmerman’s questions, and characterizing Martin as the aggressor [aren't we supposed to teach kids not to talk to strangers?], Sanford Police Department Chief Bill Lee Jr. appears to have assessed the Martin case using the standards that apply to law enforcement officers. [This puts aside the rather unavoidable issue of white supremacist police forces systematically harassing and mass murdering people of color in the US.] This is wrong. Martin was under no legal duty to obey or to cooperate with Zimmerman in being questioned, because George Zimmerman is not a law enforcement officer. [And if he were? What right should a law enforcement officer have to stop such a youth?]

Being the local neighborhood watch captain [read: assassin or cold-blooded killer] does not elevate him to that status. Nor was Zimmerman asked by any law enforcement officer to assist in detaining Martin – in fact, he was specifically told not to follow Martin. Zimmerman is entitled to none of the presumptions available to law enforcement officers under Florida law. The presumptions of acting in good faith that are afforded to law enforcement officers do not apply to Zimmerman. [The presumption of acting in good faith should not apply to armed members of racist police forces.]
- Carolyn Edgar, CNN

I got a lot of emails about Trayvon. I have read a lot of articles. I have seen a lot of television segments. The message is consistent. Most of the commentators, writers, op-ed pages agree. Something went wrong. Trayvon was murdered. Racially profiled. Race. America’s [uber-white] elephant that never seems to leave the room. But, the part that doesn’t sit well with me is that all of the messengers of this message are all black too. I mean, it was only two weeks ago when almost every white person I knew was tweeting about stopping a brutal African warlord from killing more innocent children. [Yeah, about that: white celebs and news people, and their followers, are upset about human rights atrocities when whites don't commit them against Black and Brown people; let's see George Clooney speak out against white and male supremacy in the U.S.A.] And they even took thirty minutes out of their busy schedules to watch a movie about dude. They bought t-shirts. Some bracelets. Even tweeted at Rihanna to take a stance. But, a 17 year old American kid is followed and then ultimately killed by a neighborhood vigilante who happens to be carrying a semi-automatic weapon and my white friends are quiet. Eerily quiet. Not even a trending topic for the young man. [Thank you. And in a report about two kids who very negligently threw a shopping cart over a railing, causing a white woman below to be seriously injured, I took note of how many whites made sure to characterize the two youth as "thugs". The first comment on this story at Huffington Post reads as follows:

"WhatIThinkIs

2 Fans

05:24 PM on 11/04/2011

Charge them as adults with attempted murder. At 12 years old they should have known they could hurt someone. The severity of the charges must fit the severity of the crime."]

We’ve heard the 911 calls. We seen the 13 year old witness. We’ve read the letter from the alleged killer’s father. We listened to the anger of the family’s attorney. We’ve felt the pain of Trayvon’s mother. For heaven’s sake, for 24 hours he was a deceased John Doe at the hospital because even the police couldn’t believe that maybe he LIVES in the community.

There are still some facts to figure out. There are still some questions to be answered. But, let’s be clear. Let’s be very, very clear. Before the neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman, started following him against the better judgement of the 911 dispatcher. Before any altercation. Before any self-defense claim. Before Travyon’s cries for help were heard on the 911 tapes. Before the bullet hit him dead in the chest. Before all of this. He was suspicious. He was suspicious. suspicious. And you know, like I know, it wasn’t because of the hoodie or the jeans or the sneakers. Cause I had on that same outfit yesterday and no one called 911 saying I was just wandering around their neighborhood. It was because of one thing and one thing only. Trayvon is black.

- Michael Skolnick, GlobalGrind

Again, thank you, Michael.

See also *here* and *here* for more on some of these stories at Democracy Now!

What I take from all of this is that the genocide of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people is on-going without relief across the Americas, across Central Asia (including the mass murder of an Afghan family by Sgt. Robert Bales), and across the globe, by wealthy white male supremacists and their imperialist militias. We know, too, that millions of women and girls will be raped, tortured, and murdered by men again this year, for the "crime" of being female, and that the gynocide will not be reported or understood in these terms. 

 

 

The issue of what constitutes crime (including hate crime), terrorism, and human rights violation and who is immune from any and all laws supporting human rights, will not likely be discussed by the most structurally powerful members of my society who engage in criminal and violating behavior. What will be defended in court by supremely well-paid attorneys is the rights of militias and rich folks and whites--disproportionately male--to threaten, harass, terrorise, and mass murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous people by any means "necessary" to sustain and affirm het white male and imperialist corporate power.

To sign the petition calling for the arrest of the assassin of Trayvon Martin, please see *here*.

The White Male His-story of Sexuality, and the Power of The Marginalised Voice

image is from here

Unlike some of my peers, I do not regard Sigmund Freud as unworthy of study. But nor do I place him at the center of such study. Across cultures and eras, white men have had some really bizarre ideas about sexuality and gender. They've theorised there's only one sex, and that there are only two (opposite) sexes. However many genders and sexes white men believe exist, they seem incapable of imagining a world in which men do not dominate and control women and "women's sexuality"--often enough a sexuality designed by men for men. I've watched enough white male science fiction wherein the white male writer or producer creates new worlds in future eras. I've watched enough to know that however far into the universe the white het male supremacist's mind goes, he cannot creatively conceive of women *not* dressing in tight outfits designed for his voyeuristic pleasure. He cannot conceive of her as not existing for him.

Whatever the theories, they have tended to serve both white and male supremacy against the bodies and and human rights of millions of women and girls of all colors and cultures. Their theories are also traditionally anti-lesbian and anti-gay. Their theories have functioned to promote the humanity of white (and usually het) men (the minority) while denigrating and demonising the humanity of everyone else (the majority). His inhumanity is often enough rendered invisible, or is termed something else--the product, perhaps, of unfortunate events early in his life. That white men, as a class, ensure that unfortunate events will systematically scar the lives of girls globally seems not to worry him. In this theories and in his world, only white men act out their pain in gynocidal and genocidal ways. White men traditionally theorise their pain as an explanation for their abusive actions. If painful childhoods, troubled by rape and invasion, were the source of acting out violence against other people, and if victimised people were allowed do violence to their perpetrators, men the world over would have a lot to worry about. And white men who travel the world over to rape trafficked and enslaved girls and women would have cause to worry a great deal.

What I look for in theory is a human story, a humane understanding, that reveals to the reader the role of white and male supremacy, among other forces of institutionalised ideology, in making things as they are. I look for theory to bring into focus the experiences and worldviews of the people who whites and men seek to silence and destroy.

One such theory of sexuality is found in Catharine A. MacKinnon's essay "Does Sexuality Have a History?", which may be read here:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive/act2080.0030.001/16:2?g=mqrg;page=root;rgn=full+text;size=100;view=image;xc=1

I've praised the following work before, and this time won't be the last. But one of the best essays on sexuality, one of the best theories on sex that I've seen, is the one that follows. Referencing the video (well, the audio), I don't quite understand the laughter from the audience at one point. Although times have changed and margarine isn't regarded in the same way as it was in the 1970s, nothing about her analogy is funny to me. Taken without today's negative associations, I see it as useful to her points, especially as it conjures such a tactile, sensual relationship to her ideas on the Erotic.

This is an early version of a speech and essay that later appeared in her brilliant collection of speeches and essays called Sister Outsider. It was delivered at a radical and feminist conference on pornography and prostitution in the late 1970s in San Francisco, CA, USA.



Here is a link to the speech as presented in that book:

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/uses-of-erotic-erotic-as-power-classic.html

Please consider the theories of radical feminist women of color as necessarily central to our understandings of all of us, and organise your revolutions around their ideas and visions.

image is from here

 

On Pornography and Sexual Athleticism

image is from here

[Added to at the end, on 9 March 2012.]

It is often argued by pro-pornography consumers and sexxxism industry producers and investors that the actors in pornography films are amazing human beings demonstrating a kind of Olympian ability to have sex over and over and over again. Below is one such comment that appeared here: http://nextgenjournal.com/2012/02/inside-pornography-a-rational-feminist-critique/

It is the first comment offered following the article by Larisa Manescu.

Jim Graham [writes:]

It is true that since the mid-90's, BDSM-inspired power play has become the dominant style of sex act portrayed in mainstream pornography. There is quite a bit more slapping and choking in the porn scenes released from the mainstream porn industry over the last 20 years, but this is not just because of the porn industry's traditional misogyny (though there certainly is that).

Porn stars are sexual athletes who demonstrate advanced sex play for the viewer's pleasure. Anal sex and threesomes are advanced sex. These (and most) porn sex acts are activities that many sexual beginners hope to experience one day, and as they become more sexually advanced these men and women (swingers, poly, kinky sluts, and other monogamish people) often live out their fantasies, with or without integrating elements of power play. The extreme acts that you mention (ATM, gagging, DP/DV/DA, etc.) are much dirtier than regular sex, and porn stars make their money by pushing boundaries, but not unusual at a private sex party.

While the women in most pornography are portrayed as submissive, please keep in mind that there are thousands of porn scenes where the man is dominated, cuckolded or otherwise made to submit in the same ways.

All modern sex scenes include more spitting than ever before, which you and I probably agree is much less appealing, but for most porn watchers sloppier is dirtier and indicates that the actress is putting some effort into it, and that is exactly what the average porn watcher is looking for - a woman who they find attractive pushing her sexual boundaries while devoting her attention to her sex partner(s) until everyone is satisfied. That is the porn I watch, from studios like Elegant Angel and Belladonna Productions.

"The thought is that pornography, in the late 20th century, could have adopted entirely different sexual practices, ones more intimate, realistic and yet still erotic and stimulating. However, at the expense of the woman, it spiraled down a more intense, risky, and demeaning path."

Various people (most famously Candida Royalle) have tried to convince the porn industry that they should produce erotic imagery that women would also enjoy, but I don't believe that there was ever a time where the industry would have adopted different sexual practices, or had the talent to portray the more subtle sex play that you wish porn provided, until today. As more women and couples purchase porn for their mutual enjoyment, then the now internet-diversified industry will produce a wide range of videos that are intended for more than just male masturbation.

This is my response:

Julian Real replies:

I want to respond to this statement specifically (but also to the whole of the comment): "Porn stars are sexual athletes who demonstrate advanced sex play for the viewer's pleasure."

From all the people I know who engage in or have engaged in casual-sex-for-money, within or outside systems of prostitution and procurement, within or outside systems of sexual slavery, I'm not hearing that "advanced sex" and "sexual athlet[icism]" are the most accurate, appropriate, or pertinent terms to use, any more than someone working twelve to fourteen hours per day in a sweat shop ought to be considered an "income athlete", or someone who is showing the rest of us how to do it (work-for-pay) better or more maturely. Your analysis leaves out (curiously and completely) the trauma involved in being physically invaded and assaulted by many people over many days. For empathy-building, I'd suggest you go out and engage in the kind of "sex" that is promoted by corporate pimps and let me know if you find it untraumatic. But as someone who might potentially be your friend, I wouldn't advise you do so.

There is a rather cynical and callous assumption built into an argument for valuing such sexual athleticism that there are, in fact, some people--some peculiarly abuse-immune class of human beings--who can and do manage to engage in serially physically, emotionally, and spiritually abusive and exploitive "sex acts" and *not* be traumatised by them. We might note that if the acts weren't abusive, drug abuse as a requirement for getting through a day or night of them might not be so ubiquitous.

If you could only have body-pummeling sex by being drugged or drunk, your dearest friends might question whether the sexual behavior was good for you. (As well as the excessive daily drug and alcohol consumption.) If the performance of such sexual athletics necessitates dangerous levels of drug abuse and often unconscious dissociation to simply be part of it, ought we not demonstrate at least occasional compassion for those of us who are inside systems of sexual exploitation, abuse, and slavery? Every person I have known who has willfully engaged in these forms of sex were either grossly sexually assaulted first, learning at a young age that they ought not have some basic and fundamental sexual boundaries that perhaps you enjoy, or they were bullied, battered, threatened and terrorised inside the systems after being part of them. If it is shown beyond question that pre-existing or on-site sexual, physical, and economic trauma is a de facto requirement for being part of the systems of procurement and slavery, I'd argue that we ought to condemn and organise against the owners and financial investors of such systems of terror and horror and, through available avenues of jurisprudence, throw the serial rapists and corporate pimps in prison.

As for this: "While the women in most pornography are portrayed as submissive, please keep in mind that there are thousands of porn scenes where the man is dominated, cuckolded or otherwise made to submit in the same ways." 

We must keep in mind that when men are submitting to women, it is always their choice to submit: they choose to do so because it is their sexual fetish or desire to submit. This demonstrates to me only that men maintain control of sexuality however and whenever they wish to. Het men being a sexual submissive in no way means he's not in charge of the whole scene being acted out. 

On White and Male Privilege and Power

image is from here

First up, things for me to be grateful for today:

I have food for the day and for tomorrow too.
I am not worried about starving or dying from ingesting unclean water.
I have easy access to clean water and to shelter that is relatively safe.
I live in a region of the world that isn't being bombed (or militarily invaded) by the US and NATO.
I live in a place that white male supremacist society doesn't designate as an appropriate place to bury nuclear waste and other highly toxic, cancer-causing chemicals.
I am not considered a failure for not having children and a spouse by now.
I am not physically immobilised.

When we consider that most females are not safe in their own homes, and that most people of color are under assault by whites and their police forces, we may conclude correctly that based on this and on the implications of what's written above, I am white, male, able-bodied, and class-advantaged. The additional facts of me being ethnically and sexually marginalised and stigmatised by dominant society isn't central to what follows.

With thanks to Kathy Miriam for getting a particular conversation going, I have been re-assessing the prolific use of the term "privilege" in some self-defined progressive to radical circles. What I have been thinking about since pondering her perspective on this (see *here* for that), isn't only the individualism that can be woven into the use of the term "privilege" (which Kathy addresses).

I'm also thinking about how such a term, such as "privilege", can alienate or be off-putting to non-blogging, non-academic people (aka, "the majority"). I'm thinking at this moment of my family-of-origin, and how the only time they'll likely use the term privilege is to acknowledge that something is a pleasure to be part of, as in: "It's a privilege to be at this event." But to be honest, that's not likely a phrase that'd come out of their mouths. They'd more likely say, "I'm thrilled to be here" and leave it at that.

I'm also thinking about how the term is often a linguistic cover for something more broadly pernicious that I do believe ought to be regularly and plainly named both on the interpersonal front and on the institutional front as well: abusive power, oppressive power, and unjust advantages and entitlements afforded to some classes of people and acted out against other classes of people.

"Privilege" is frequently used to bring attention to how oppressive behavior and practice is acted out interpersonally. When this attention obscures or eclipses larger structural and systemic realities, it can leave us with the impression that if we only attended to the interpersonal realm more, we might achieve something radically better than what we now have. I do see the term used primarily to give a name to the many ways individuals aren't mindful, accountable, and responsible in the ways they act out structural position and power against oppressed people.

It might be good to investigate why this is too often necessary. One huge, on-going, decades-long critique of the white male Left (especially but not only radical environmentalists, Socialists, and anarchists) is that they declare what is radical and revolutionary in "political action" while ignoring the interpersonal realm almost completely as a site of oppressive (read: structural, political) behavior. How many white male progressives and radicals tell sexist and racist jokes or center whiteness and maleness as "just human" without questioning this as anti-radical, anti-revolutionary (harmful, hurtful, insulting, oppressive, status quo) practice? How many times do whites and men behave in racist/sexist ways without challenging one another? How do whites and men reduce horrors like the international trafficking and enslaving of poor girls of color to one system of harm only? In my experience, whites and men usually and typically do not call each other out on our racist/white supremacist and sexist/male supremacist behavior, when it occurs in words or other non-verbal actions.

The assumption that whites and men can and ought to speak for all people has not shifted much in the last forty years, although I do notice a few more men these days using less sexist language. (Police officer instead of policeman, for example.) Anthologies by and about oppressed people, when edited by whites and men, still presume that anything written by a white or male person can be relatively universal, addressing the whole oppressed group, for example. Meanwhile the voice that is female, Black, Brown, or Indigenous is structurally presented as only ever able to speak for that group only. (So, the chapter or few chapters in which the writings by women of color are predominant are not likely to be presented as addressing the larger universal themes of the book--even when they do.) Find me the book edited by whites or men that presents the views of Indigenous, Brown, and Black women as "universal" and addressing the whole of humanity, with whites and men in the same volume only speaking about white and male experience as particularly white and male, and I'll be surprised: I've not seen it.

When oppressed people call out oppressive behavior in their oppressors, I believe it is important to heed the counsel of Pearl Cleage, expressed in Deals With The Devil and Other Reasons to Riot: listen in a posture of non-defensiveness. Too often oppressor-class people, especially whites and men, in my experience, move instantly and reflexively into a posture of self-defense, defense of our allegedly good name, our allegedly good political work, our allegedly good group. We resist knowing how we are being hurtful and harmful because we are invested in a sense of ourselves as "Radical" and "Good". Radical and self-identified good people, if white or male, are still positioned to act out oppressively against women of color on all fronts: interpersonal, social, and institutional (whether religious, economic, or otherwise). And our efforts to be responsible, accountable, and conscious don't mean we stop being positioned to be oppressors every minute of the day.

Irresponsible, non-accountable, and unconsciously oppressive actions come into sharp, cutting focus in online communities, which, in the comments sections especially, are one realm of the interpersonal. I suspect that is why "privilege" shows up there as a concern.

All of that said, social-political advantages and power when exercised by speakers against those they/we structurally oppress, are reflecting and reinforcing larger social-political realities. Regardless of the thoughtfulness and sensitivity of our micro interpersonal actions, it is usually the case that many other aspects of our lives support the more macro systems and institutions that are murderous to women, to the poor, to people of color, and to Indigenous peoples globally.

Radical political change requires attention to multiple realms of human existence, not in an either/or way. My political practice ought not consist of detailing anti-status-quo analysis of race and sex while doing so in ways that are unconsciously white-splaining and man-splaining. Rendering my own racial and sexual position, location, and advantages, and power irrelevant and invisible in a radical political conversation is one form of white-splaining and man-splaining, after all.

At this blog and away from it, I work to support radical practices in myself and other people that refuse to accept the expression of whiteness as being unraced, irrelevant, or universal, and the exercise of manhood as being just human, not gendered in politically harmful ways.

When whiteness and manhood is acted out visibly as such, it often does oppressive harm. And when it is acted out while also rendered invisible, it does at least as much oppressive harm.

I want the institutional power and systemic destructiveness, not just the interpersonal "privilege" of whiteness and manhood to be made conscious, to be challenged, and to be overthrown.

After being asked several questions by interviewers on topics they wished to hear her discuss, Andrea Dworkin was asked if she had anything else she wanted to say. I hope those of us who are white, male, and class-advantaged who are working for radical social change take notice of the explicitly intersectional and pro-activist answer she gave:

AD: I want to say more than anything that the Women’s Movement has a chance to do something miraculous, which is to really tear down these hierarchies of sex and race and class. We can do it, but the way that you do it is not through rhetorical denunciations of injustice. You do it through attacking institutions of injustice through political action. That hasn’t changed. That’s what we have to do. The other thing I would like to say is, do something. You don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to be pure, do what you can do. Do it. Life is short and you don’t know when it is going to end for you, so do it, do it now. [Source: here]

The Voice is Silent: Whitney Houston (1963-2012) dies too young at age 48

photograph of Whitney Houston is from here

I'm very sad that Whitney Houston is gone. My prayers are with her family and friends, especially her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, and her mother, the gospel singer Cissy Houston.


Below are two classic songs she popularised that I most associate with her.

"I Will Always Love You", written by Dolly Parton:



"The Greatest Love of All". From Wikipedia:

"The Greatest Love of All" is a song written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed and originally recorded by Jane Olivor & then again by George Benson for the 1977 Muhammad Ali biopic The Greatest. The song was later popularized by Whitney Houston. Creed wrote the lyrics in the midst of her struggle with breast cancer. The words describe her feelings about coping with great challenges that one must face in life, being strong during those challenges whether you succeed or fail, and passing that strength on to children to carry with them into their adult lives. Creed eventually succumbed to the disease in April 1986 at the age of 36; at the time her song was an international hit by Whitney Houston.

Guest post by Itoro Udofia: "Shedding Tears, Looking Back, Moving Forward"

Below is a cross post from Itoro's blog, Thoughts of My Mind (published Jan. 7 of this year). She has welcomed me to re-publish it below as a guest post. I am very grateful to her and am honored to have her voice and perspective as part of this blog. I hope this is not her last guest post. I also hope you take a lot from what follows. The wonderful artwork is by activist Catalina Nieto; I got her permission to reprint it here. Blessings to Itoro and to Catalina.

 

It's the New Year and I am well aware that a thoughtful post has been a long time coming. Much happened in the 2010-2011 year to leave the very core of my spirit shaken। To ring in the New Year I want to use this space to begin having more of a dialogue about, naming the unnamed, articulating habits and actions that often remain hidden in our circles of safety, community building and radical organizing. I am glad to know that there have been a flurry of articles and activists courageously addressing the many types of violence, violation and abuse we oppose so valiantly in the presence of our obvious enemies, and then practice those same habits in more subtle ways, sheltered in the safety of our homes, our places of organizing and our personal relationships.

My reasoning for wanting more of these conversations have been propelled by the painful experiences I went through trying to organize from the past couple of years, and finally 2010-2011 was the year that broke my heart and made me look at things as I had never done before. I had found that somewhere along the line, I allowed myself to become everything I did not want to become. When advising me on this situation, one of my close friends said, “You have to be there. And whatever you do. Don’t let them win.” By my actions, I had…let them win. I became profoundly silent and debilitated. I had internalized many of the harsh criticisms, cutting eyes, controlling gazes and all the denials, silence and betrayals that accompanied it, all of that had been stored inside myself. Finally, something deep, that thing that somehow held me together, broke. In the end, I spent most of my time in tears and confusion.

I began to believe that I did not deserve genuine relationships, honest answers and even so much as a civil conversation. More insidiously, especially in White radical spaces, I began to feel that I only existed to help others with their own liberation and that it was my job to take those risks for them. Any destructive habits or actions was “just a part of their process” and needed not to be taken so personally. If I dare uttered that I was tired, then it was a selfish gesture and I better be careful because clearly I did not have enough love for the people. In the end, I truly believed that I was a problem that needed to be fixed and perhaps the contempt was well deserved.

Therefore, any type of humiliation, bullying or downright ignorance experienced must have been warranted somehow, because after all, don’t people who often experience the worst of what humans have to offer deserve this anyway? Isn’t this the way the world is? After all, we’re not so bad, the world is much worse! And besides, White people are trying! They’re getting it, they’re moving…at their own pace, I mean so what if they talk too much! You should talk more. So really, there should be no support, no structures, no anything because this is the world anyway. Nasty. And I’m sure not gonna do anything to make it better. Better yet, I’ll watch. And besides the way I treat you isn’t really the big issue here, the issue is actually about this, so the way you are feeling is simply just that, a feeling that has no merit here. The list of the ways we annihilate one another goes on.

Never mind the sarcasm (and the speaking of bitterness), but please hear this. You can tell the type of inner work and reflection one does by the way they regard you the next morning. That’s the part of decolonization I’d like to talk more about. How far we’re willing to go in the action (or inaction) that is soon to come afterward, because when it comes time for us to really fight the more “relevant” issues, I simply want to know that you’re going to have my back and take that risk for us, rather than just try to save yourself. That’s a principled decision, and even indecision becomes a principle. The issue of how we regard one another is not mutually exclusive from the “real” issue.

I feel like so many of us have been saying this in so many ways and it still doesn’t get through. If issues of power, privilege and dominance are not addressed, or remain compartmentalized isms simply to be addressed at one’s convenience, there is a way these missing links begin to reflect the organization, its principles, its problem solving skills and analysis. Often, when particular links are carefully left in exchange for immediate comfort, the complexity of the conversations that need to be had are swiftly flattened, and entire histories and knowledges of many different people are left out only to be further forgotten as we move forward on the “real” issue. But who’s left picking up the slack later? And exactly who do we often find ourselves picking slack up for? …After all, doesn’t this economic system rely on such supreme tendencies and relations to strengthen itself? Class is fundamental, but it does not exist within a vacuum.

And this was the greatest contradiction I experienced in 2010-2011, that need. That conditioned need that has been essential to saving this system. It’s that need to hoard and save oneself, and rely on carefully guarded supremacies and secrets to do it. And let’s not play around, we often know who is allowed to get by with this type of behavior unscathed. And not to say I didn’t try many times to bury myself in silence, often because I was tired, painfully uncomfortable, afraid and at times downright cowardly. But even despite all those things, I never had the luxury to escape. I had to learn real quick how things were. The system was not built on us escaping or as Audre Lorde puts it, us even surviving. But, we’re still here to tell the tale. For 2012-2013, I want us to continue to be brave enough to tell the tale and strengthen ourselves. I want us to speak out and just say it, because we know the lies that are there to explain reality, and we also know that for some reason not enough people are being honest.

So I’ll end the story here, because many of us have lived through these stories in many ways, and hurt in many ways because of them. So this is for us who cannot simply get up and walk away, escape, and remain willfully ignorant. For us who have made mistakes and are doing the work necessary to undo the lies the master taught us. For those of us willing to risk in solidarity, risk for unity and think beyond immediate comfort. Time and energy is of prime importance, and it is often something stolen from us as we fight daily for our humanity, bread and full development. I have been weighing how I want to spend my time and energy, and have decided that there are certain things I am no longer willing to negotiate for the New Year.

I am worthy of a loving community that wants to work for the full development of all human beings, and yes, this also includes some level of “emotional” support
1. No more compartmentalizing! No more escapes! No more selective listening and speaking! We need an analysis that includes us all।
2. No more disrespect, nastiness and violence towards people we claim we love and/or support। Yes the world is nasty, but we certainly don’t make it any more sustaining or accountable by letting things go on as they are and remaining silent when we see someone we love hurting. We should try to lessen the suffering, not exacerbate it. Since when is it okay to begin looking at each other through the same eyes our greatest exploiters and beneficiaries on this earth do? We already know all too well what it is to hurt, however, it is clear we need to do more work on what it means to love and truly make a world where all our basic needs are met. We do not deserve the worst of everything!

In 2012-2013, I will be tender towards myself and those I love, I will not espouse words and phrases without practicing them to the fullest extent of what they mean, I will be honest and forthright, disciplined and resilient। I am not a problem to be fixed, this system and the ways in which we regard one another needs fixing and it has to be a people effort. By no means, is this a fluffy, kumbaya type of sentiment, or something that can be simply theorized into abstraction for the comfort of not truly practicing it in reality. This is quite material and concrete. This means, that the power has to be laid down, the hoarding has to be laid down, the lies have to be laid down, put on the table and directly talked about. The ability to imagine everyone there as equals also has to be put on the table so we can say it is a true possibility for us.

Happy New Year! Happy Blog Space! And Happy many spaces we are creating to do the work that needs to be done!

The beautiful artwork featured here is from fellow warrior and activist Catalina Nieto. Her work has been featured here in previous posts. I am happy to say that many people have taken notice of her amazing work! Re-posted from Thoughts of My Mind, http://thoughtsofmymind-itoro.blogspot.com.