Jess, Steff and Leila's army is hard at work!

SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective



Check out the new website for SPEAK! Women of Color Media Collective! I met some of these awesome women at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit last year. Here's the details from their front page:

BUY THE CD! YOU'LL LOVE IT!

Speak! is a women of color-led media collective. In the summer months of 2008, they created a CD compilation of spoken word, poetry, and song. After months of hard work, they are excited to finally share their first self-named album with the world!

With artists and poets from all over the country, the Speak! CD is a testament of struggle, hope, and love. Many of the contributors are in the Radical Women of Color blogosphere and will be familiar names to you. Instead of just reading their work, you’ll be able to hear their voices.

Proceeds of this album will go toward funding mothers and/or financially restricted activists wanting to attend the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, MI this July. This is our own grassroots organizing at its finest with financial assistance from the AMC. Here it is, ready for your purchasing!

Help Winona LaDuke

On November 9, 2008, Winona LaDuke, political activist and former vice-presidential nominee, lost her home to a fire. Her family is safe, but she has lost much. Read here to see how you can help Winona and her family.

Linking is awesome

I wish I were a creative genius and could come up with the blog icon that is so richly deserved by Renegade Evolution, who has given up the side bar of her blog to list all the posts, from many different viewpoints that explain what a complete asshole Kyle Payne is.

Linking isn't difficult, but it is a political issue in the blogsophere. Because I cannot spend loads of time reading internet posts, I appreciate beyond measure when somebody collects blog posts on important. So three and more cheers for Renegade Evolution.

Allied Media Conference

I arrived home Monday night and have been working like a maniac ever since. No rest for the wicked.

I accomplished many things by attending AMC. I met awesome women. You know them from the internets. They are also awesome in person. I'll write more about that later.

I managed to raise the average age 20 years or so every time I walked into a room. Which is perfectly OK. Being around young activists is a real treat. Only sour point came when I signed into the dorm and someone behind the desk asked me if I was there as a chaperone. Not a big deal, since there were, in fact, events for high school age kids at which chaperones are required. But I was with two 30 something (I think) videographers and it felt like an insult to them. What? These folks need chaperones?

The dorms were ascetic to the extreme. And empty of everything useful. First, call me old for not realizing that dorm rooms have private baths and showers these days. Also call me clueless for not realizing I'd need soap. In the U.S., of course, it is impossible to buy one bar of soap. So I was forced to walk to a CVS and purchase way more soap and shampoo than I needed.

Call me an old fogie for having nothing at all to entertain myself in the ascetic dorm room. No laptop. No MP3 player. Just a Walkman. So I listened to some awesome jazz stations as I fell asleep.

What's different about AMC from other conferences I've travelled to? People are all about caring and learning. No old axes to re-grind. No old battles to re-fight. Just new ideas and new attempts at making a difference.

Grace Lee Boggs in her closing speech talked about the anger of the sixties that motivated a lot of us. Activists today seem to be motivated by something else: caring and loving and forgiving and continuing. If I were a poet (Little Light could do this!), I could describe this sense of both acceptance for our faults and hope for our futures.

I also got to experience my first pay-as-you-go cell phone. The rest of you awesome nerds know all about this, but I have been postponing my acquaintance with modern technology. I can't tell you how much wasted time I spent trying to figure out how to use and program this tiny piece of technology.

I keep reminding myself of my mother's experience. She's a very intelligent woman. She read the instructions about loading websites. The instructions tell you to type a url address into the text box and you will be transported to the website you desire. Nowhere in the instructions does it mention you have to hit return or enter in order for the website to be accessed. So she spent far too much time typing addresses in and waiting for something to happen. Same experience, different tool for me and the cell phone. What an amazing waste of time!

Much more to talk about, of course. I am psyched and inspired.

Tomorrow, I head off to continue my tour of the rust belt cities. I'm attending the National Anti-War Conference in Cleveland this weekend. About which, more later.

Hugs to all the fabulous people I spent time with this weekend. You make the world a better place!

Going to AMC

Why is it that I have to work three hours of overtime in order to get ready a few days off? Yikes!

Anyway, I'm headed off to Detroit for the Allied Media Conference this weekend. I've never been before and I have no idea what to expect, except that I look forward to meeting some folks I've been reading on the internets. Brownfemipower, Black Amazon, Little Light, Miss Crip Chick Lex, Mamita Mala, tigera consciente will all be there. An embarrassment of riches if you ask me.

I'm going to do my best to sit, listen, learn, absorb, and try to comprehend. One thing about an old gal like me is how hard it is to sit and listen for hours on end. I know I did this when I was in school for many years. But I've lost the talent. I need to rest and let stuff settle in or it will just bounce right off my hard shell of a brain.

Going to Detroit is almost like going home. I spent much time on my Grandmother's farm growing up on 37 Mile Road north.

I hope to give a decent report when I return. Wish me luck!

Let's hear from the real workers

I posted below about a bricklayer who was asked to place the first brick in the new U of Minn football stadium. It is so seldom that workers are listened to, much less held up as someone to honor. This unwillingness to focus on the worker or to listen to what workers say about their own lives, is rampant in the U.S. We're constantly talked to by so-called experts who have theories about what workers think, do, want and don't want. Which is just silly. Why not allow the workers to speak for themselves? Why not learn what their lives are like by listening to them and encouraging them to speak?

One worker who I've had the opportunity to listen to online in the last couple of years is Renegade Evolution (RE) a sex-worker and pornography actress. Now there's a point of view we don't hear very often. I've learned a lot from her. And I was pleased to find she had been invited to speak in a debate at William and Mary College. Two anti-porn speakers, two sex-worker advocate speakers in a public debate at a University. Cool, huh?

But wait! One of the invited debaters is trying to prevent RE from speaking as Ren talks about here. Apparently when Sam Berg heard that Ren had been invited, she contacted the organizers and asked to have Ren uninvited to the debate.

I've never understood this tactic. I have organized debates and discussions by people who disagree with each other for over 20 years. I am never impressed when one of the speakers tries to control who is allowed to speak for the opposing viewpoint.

This tactic makes Berg look stupid and weak. Is her point of view so easily destroyed if there are one or two sex workers in the room? This tactic makes Berg look arrogant. Does she expect event organizers to meet a series of her personal demands? This tactic makes Berg look less committed to her cause. Can she only fight for her political point of view in an environment that sees to her comfort? Should anyone rely on Berg as an ally if she can't even attend a public debate with someone she dislikes?

Mostly, This shows an incredible amount of disrespect for the organizers of the event. These people are usually not paid, have opened themselves up to risk and conflict by suggesting a controversial issue be addressed, and have neither the time nor the energy to deal with the personal problems of an invited speaker.

My sympathies go out to the college student who is trying to put this together. She does not deserve this carp.

My sympathies go out to Ren who doesn't deserve to have someone trying to undermine her before she gets a chance to make her point.

My sympathies go out to the people who saw Berg as a political ally, but cannot rely on her to fight for their point of view in an open, public debate.

If Berg cannot stand being in a public forum with Ren, then she should step aside and put forward someone else who can stand the heat and state her point of view.

Do it now!

These people need your help right this minute. And they deserve it. So click on over and take a moment to do whatever you can to help:

Southall Black Sisters
Southall Black Sisters, a not-for-profit organisation, was established in 1979 to meet the needs of black (Asian and African-Caribbean) women. Our aims are to highlight and challenge violence against women; empower them to gain more control over their lives; live without fear of violence; and assert their human rights to justice, equality and freedom. For more than two decades we have been at the forefront of challenging domestic and gender violence locally and nationally, and campaigning for the provision of support services to enable women and their children to escape violent relationships.

Southall Black Sisters under threat of closure

SBS is currently facing the threat of closure as a result of our local authority’s (Ealing) decision to withdraw our funding as of April 2008....

What can you do to help?

Another patriarchal oppresser is among us

Head on over to visit and congratulate Antiprincess for enduring 18 hours of labor and bring us our newest little patriarch, Wolfgang!

For argument's sake

Renegade Evolution has a wonderful post up debunking an anti-porn blogger's insistent post claiming that an individual cannot be both pro-porn and feminist.

Ren does a great job of dismantling the post. You should definitely read that first link.

Belledame's commentstakes on the similarities between the anti-porn argument and fundamentalism.

I want to take a slightly different take. Maggie Hays isn't really communicating with anyone but her choir here. She's set up a scenario in which anyone who disagrees with her is an idiotic, brainwashed, mis-taught, un-examining, thoughtless, braindead amoeba.

Why write a post like this? The obvious reason is to shore up your tribe. Assure your posse that they are smart, thoughtful and empowered while everyone else is a hopeless, clueless idiot.

Gee, where have I seen that before? We women were also told not to worry our pretty little heads about things outside our abilities. There is something deliciously erotic (pun most definitely intended) about believing that we and we alone are intelligent, while those who think differently are helpless dupes. And it really isn't a bad thing, all in all, to reinforce ourselves and our fellow thinkers that what we believe is right. That's a good thing and an important thing in the activist community.

But I've found something thrilling and exciting in communicating with people who hold different ideas about politics. I don't want this to come off all self-righteous and full of self-praise, because that really isn't the point. Instead, I want to focus on the value I've found in deciding that people who hold political beliefs opposed to my own have well-thought-out reasons for their beliefs.

I had a co-worker who considered himself to be a conservative just to the right of Genghis Kahn. He understood that I was a pinko commie. Yet there were so many issues upon which we agreed. His explanation was that we each were so far outside the traditional boundaries that we had come full circle and met on the far side of the moon.

His thoughts thrilled and excited me. I loved the fact that we both were thinking and drawing conclusions about the realities we faced. Some of our conclusions were opposite, but our thinking processes were similar and useful and stimulating. One thing we had in common was that we had a basic fundamental belief in the intelligence capabilities of our fellow human beings. We mistrusted stereotypes. We mistrusted politicians. We trusted our fellow human beings to be able to think, reason, and see through the bullshit.

Honestly, I do not think I could bear believing that the world was full of idiots. That's a form of pessimism even my depressed soul cannot embrace.

Let's talk privacy

So have you ever had a gun pointed in your face by a crazy person?

Have you ever had a close relative try to run you over in his car?

Have you ever had a psychotic lunatic hold you at gunpoint until you did whatever crazy thing he decided you should do?

When these sorts of things happen, it's a good idea to get the fuck away. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it means uprooting your whole life and running away to someplace safe. People do it all the time. I did it many years ago. I'm proud of myself for doing so.

Some abusers, especially psychotic ones, are really good at appearing normal to other people. Especially if they are white middle class professionals. Because, you know, those type of people, "our" people, just don't do that sort of thing.

So a few times while the bastard was still alive, I ran into "well-meaning" people who thought it would be a wonderful thing to patch up that unfortunate misunderstanding I had about the man who tried to kill me. So they gave him my number or my address. And he was back with the harassment. So I uprooted my life again. I cut off more "friends" and relatives.

It sounds like I had it rough, but I didn't really. I would much rather go somewhere new and feel safe than to have to deal with the wacko again. I was young with transferrable skills and no kids at the time. Sure, it wasn't fair, but whose life is, you know? Lots of people had it much worse than I did. I had skills and savings and close friends who respected me.

But one thing I noticed, again and again, is how some people could never understand my need for privacy. Sure, privacy seemed like a good thing, but there didn't seem to be any reason to get all whacked up about it. For some people, privacy is something that never even occurred to them.

These people would think, why the hell not give out my phone number to someone who was interested? Why not point out where I lived or worked to a nice looking gentlemen? A professor, even!

So I'm just posting this here to say, privacy can mean nothing to you if you aren't facing the prospect of an angry lunatic with a gun and a grudge. Hello, privilege! Please, just get the fuck away from me.

And stop, please just stop, trying to make privacy a trivial and unimportant thing. It's the reason I'm alive today.

The always awesome Ms. Crip Chick

A story about a disabled child in the Chicago Tribune launches a rain of ignorant comments and Ms. Crip Chick's response strikes a huge chord with me.

Confronted with such massive ignorance, it may seem as if all that hard work activists have done for disability rights has had no effect whatsoever. The truth is not that people aren't doing some kick ass organizing. The truth is a bit more disturbing:

"If it isn’t apparent to you yet with 2007 cases like Christe Reimer, Ruben Navarro, Katie Thorpe, Ashley X, (I’m too tired to link but go over to FRIDA’s website, Not Dead Yet’s, or Cilla’s), the truth is there are people that actually hate disabled people. Sorry to break the news but they literally want us gone. Dead. Locked in basements. Starved. Suffocated. Drowned. Overly medicated."

Sounds kinda depressing, eh? And it would be if she stopped there. Which she doesn't, of course:

"Prettying it up by saying we just need them to understand us better, quoting Dr. King over and over, and settling for what table scraps we’re given is not going to cut it. Awareness without systemic change never will never work and our people our suffering because of it.

"We have to RISE up. We have to take control of our movement and the direction it’s headed (let’s start by putting the focus on COMMUNITY and not promotion of the individual.) We have to make it our responsibility to tell our OWN people that to be a part of this community is a blessing, not a curse. We have to take power. There aren’t any options left."

Speak it!

A book proposal and its consequences

VISITORS FROM FEMINISTING, PLEASE REQUEST THAT THESE LINKS BE POSTED DIRECTLY ON THE FEMNINISTING SITE. I REFUSE TO BE THE "NICE WHITE LADY" (SEE VIDEO ABOVE) THROUGH WHICH THESE AWESOME WOMEN GET FILTERED. THANK YOU.

Over at Feministing.com, there is a Call for submissions for a new book to be published by Seal Press.

Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren't shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Welcome to the world of Yes Means Yes.

Yes Means Yes! will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.....

What follows is a series of bullet points suggesting topics to write about.

Make of it what you will. This could turn it to be a decent book. But what a narrow concept of rape!

One good thing, is the quality of the responses to this badly written cfp. Read and enjoy:


Tekanji

Magniloquence

Sylvia

Sudy

Fire fly

Black Amazon

Veronica

Therimorph

I'm falling up

Elaine Vigneault

Responses from at least one of the editors, Jacklyn Friedman, have been exceptional in the lack of defensive I normally see when valid criticism arises:

Jacklyn's response to Tekanji

Jacklyn's respose to Firefly

To assume or not to assume

I've recently been insulted by a blogger I will refer to as Ms. X. that I have considered a friend for quite a while. Here's her capper:

"That kind of stuff is worthy of Bill Clinton, no[t] you."

I'm not going to link to the post because it contains private e-mails from another blogger, Ms. Y, I also consider a friend that have been posted without her permission.

That crosses a line for me. If you have to make your point about a private conversation, find a creative way to do it. Posting someone's private e-mail and address is not only wrong, it's fucking lazy.

The issue is a private e-mail list. Ms. X's original post mentioned some private e-mail lists she'd heard of among feminists. Finding out there were private lists pissed Ms. X off. Ms. X infers that private e-mail lists are all about "posses". A posse is a group of supporters a blogger can count on to come to her defense whenever anyone dares to question her behavior. So for Ms. X, it seemed, participation in a private e-mail list was equivalent to fomenting posses. She asked her readers to offer reasons why they would participate in such a list.

There are all kinds of private mailing lists and I have been on several over the years. I offered reasons why I believe private conversations in a mailing list and out of the public eye are useful and healthy.

In Ms. X's next comment, she mentions a specific list and a specific list owner, Ms. Y, without naming the list itself. I happen to be on a mailing list owned by Ms. Y. The list I'm a member of is private.

Is Ms. X talking about the private mailing list I'm on or is she talking about another private mailing list owned by Ms. X? I don't know. I'd have to learn a lot more about the list before I can make that decision. Also, of course, I have pledged privacy to Ms. Y and I intend to uphold that pledge. But I don't feel as if I'm in danger of violating that privacy simply by interacting with Ms. X in a conversation about the usefulness of private mailing lists in general.

Next Ms. X claims that she was banned from a specific private mailing list owned by Ms. Y and that she is receiving traffic directly from that private mailing list. Understandably, this makes Ms. X feel bad. People are linking to her blog posts directly from this private list and Ms. X can see that in her blog statistics. Ms. X asks that members of the list from which she was banned either speak with Ms. X directly or copy and paste her posts to the mailing list, rather than linking.

This is also the post in which Ms. X starts revealing private discussions between herself and Ms. Y. She claims Ms. Y told her her presence on the mailing list would be unwelcome. This leads Ms. X to believe that Ms. Y is using this mailing list to say bad things about her behind her back. Combine that with the direct linking and you've got a recipe for paranoia.

Or not.

Here's a couple of reasons why paranoia might not be the first stop for that particular conclusion train.

First and foremost, there are lot of reasons why people on private mailing lists post links to other people's blogs. List members may be linking to posts they admire. List members may be linking to posts they don't understand, so that they ask for clarification from fellow list members. If you are a blogger that has posted about feminism consistently and for a long time, it is likely you will be linked by other feminists. Pretty cool.

Second, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of privacy that is going to be a trend in this story. Ms. Y happens to have a healthy respect for privacy and private conversation. I hadn't read Ms. Y revealing any private conversations. No mention of banning, no mention of unwelcome bloggers.

A commenter asks a question about why Ms. X was banned, and this prompts Ms. X to post a series of private e-mails between herself and Ms. Y.

Now a new story emerges. Rather than being banned, it is revealed the Ms. X wanted to JOIN the mailing list. Ms. Y replies that the list is in a rough period and the membership is currently frozen. Ms. Y assures Ms. X that there will be future opportunities to participate in private mailing lists together.

Do you see how things are shifting now? At first the argument is that mailing lists are bad. Now it is revealed that Ms. X wanted to join a list and was told she could not.

I responded in shock that Ms. X would post private e-mails. But I want to keep the discussion going. I point out that lots of people aren't comfortable with direct interaction. People say bad things behind our backs. The thing to remember is that I'm not going to change my opinion of Ms. X based on gossip (and remember, nobody has gossiped about Ms. X at this point). I pledged that I'd judge Ms. X by my own standards and that I'd expect she would do the same for me.

Alas, not true. Time for another side trip on the wayward conclusion train.

Ms. X now claims that horrible things are being said about her behind her back by someone who pretends to be a friend to her face. Next, she asserts that the mailing list she wanted to join is, in actuality, a list designed specifically to reject her and another blogger. She now returns to the argument that private mailing lists are always bad.

If you've read this far, and seen the twists and turns, I suppose you have figured out what a losing cause my further participation is. But I try to take Ms. X at her word. She claims that our friend, Ms. Y, has created a list whose purpose is to exclude her and talk about her behind her back. This obviously isn't the list I'm on, since Ms. X isn't a topic of discussion there.

But, maybe Ms. Y need to vent somewhere and has created the "I hate Ms. X" mailing list. Maybe she has recruited members from all over the internets. Perhaps they have badges, and cute little names and a theme song.

OK, maybe not.

Many comments ensue and eventually, the mailing list is named.

Yup. It's the one I'm on. Of course it's in completely unrecognizable form. I've got to wonder where Ms. X is getting these crazy ideas about the content of a list she isn't allowed to read. And now that she's revealed the name of the list, she feels free to reveal that I am a member of that list.

Remember what I said about privacy? I intended to keep my pledge to Ms. Y. But Ms. X didn't want to let that happen. So not only does Ms. Y's privacy get tossed to wind, but Ms. X chooses to throw mine along for the ride.

I suppose I should be angry.

Yes, the thread is patently absurd.

MailingList/Bad, MailingList/Good, MailingList/Bad.

But, dammit, I respected this woman right up until that thread. I've learned from her. I've laughed with her. I want her to be healthy and ready to rock and roll. I want to read more of her wonderful thoughts and opinions and be able to follow along as her mind zips from one interesting subject to another.

She's not there now. She's in a bad place. I'm not what she needs right now.

I hope one day she'll be back blogging and making me laugh and cry and think and smile.

A great man passes

Recently, the partner of one of the women in my book group, died after a long and difficult battle with cancer. I knew Peter only as a partner to Priscilla. We knew each other's names and could make pleasant conversation. But I can't say I ever spent more than 30 minutes in his presence.

I did know his work however, Peter was an ornithologist with a specialty. He could preserve birds as study skins or mounts for museums. The next time you see an exhibit that contains a preserved animal, you might notice something important: the people who do the work are not credited. Peter was one of those people.

The following is information I have discovered about Peter since his passing. I never knew what an amazing person he was.

Peter was a bird lover who was a walking encyclopedia on birds. He could mimic bird song and bird calls. He could describe the science and the behavior of hundreds of species of birds. The birds he used for exhibits were birds that had died from window strikes or vehicle strikes. He studied the bird's behavior and structure intensely so that he could arrange the mounts in realistic settings and positions. He was a scientist and a master craftsman.

Because I was Priscilla's friend, I had the opportunity to see many of Peter's birds in process. His craft involves tedious, patient practice that combines science and artistry. There are no taxidermy stores where you can pick up a few eagle eyes or falcon feathers to put together a bird. Peter began with a dead bird, but he would use anything and everything he could find to create a realistic looking model. He was self-taught and his amazing skill is lost with his passing.

He work is in the Smithsonian, in the museums across the world, and in DNR displays here in Minnesota. If you go to Lake Itasca, the birthplace of the Mississippi, you can see one of Peter's eagles.

So this is what I didn't know about the man I knew slightly and who has passed away recently.

His work was a passion and did not pay well. He had no insurance when he got sick and his care became Priscilla's full-time job. Because I did not know Peter well, I was not able to help as much as I would have liked. He did have many amazing friends and people who did what they could. The process of being ill and uninsured in the U.S. was a never-ending battle for the two of them. It was unbelievably frustrating and incredibly sad.

Priscilla has been forwarding eulogies from ornithologists expressing their memories and fondness for Peter and I am suprised to learn how widely respected and admired he was in his little corner of the universe. It seems I was in the presence of a genius and true artist, but I never knew it. Neither Peter nor Priscilla talked about his genuis or bragged about his accomplishments. To me, he was simply a nice guy, a good partner to my friend, and he had an unusual job.

This has reminded me that our fellow human beings can do amazing things, make awesome contributions to the world, and we may never know it. And, of course, it reminds me that capitalism sucks. Why should a man with his knowledge and skill be allowed to wither away without any real help? Why should his entire care be placed on the back of my friend, with no hope of relief?

I fucking hate cancer.

Edited to add:

I got together with Priscilla and a bunch of friends today. Apparently Peter was told there was nothing the doctors could do for him. He left the hospital and went into hospice care. Two weeks later, he passed.

I don't know what to say. I'm angry and I'm sad.