mixed messages

Love then what is it?

2011-07-23T18:43:00.000-04:00

Love then what is it?
Two bodies twisting together
The tender baby bonding at the breast
The patriot-soldier in her devotion
The love of the people for their leader
The implicit trust?

What then is love
Where shall we find it
How ought we create it
What breeds it what keeps it
What distinguishes it
From everything else we do?

Love then what is it
Do we know?
Is there someone
A sage who can explain
Is there somewhere a book
A song a tree
To make it plain?

And if nobody tells us
How will we know
If nobody shows us
How will we know
What then is love?

On the [Red] Road....

2011-07-07T22:50:00.000-04:00

Recently home from the Mashpee Pow Wow up on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

(Photo courtesy of Joyce Rain Anderson)

Wow, those Mashpee Wampanoags sure

know how to throw a powwow!!!

Deer meat, quahog chowder, raffles, quail, handsome men,bluefish, beautiful women, wampum, rabbit, contests galore and FIREBALL!!!

Guess they ought to since this was their 90TH annual...but still I gotta give 'em credit because they have survived so much and only recently (2007) got "recognized" by the [colonialist] federal government.

All those hundreds of years that the US government was saying they were wiped out they just kept on having pow wows and handing down traditions generation to generation. Impressive.

Keep in mind these are the Indians [think Squanto] who first befriended the misguided pilgrims-- a kindness they would live to regret.

Unfortunately there are other Wampanoag tribes who have yet to be recognized (like the Pocasset). They were at the Pow Wow too.

How long will it take the US to recognize all the surviving descendants of all the tribes they tried to exterminate?

My prediction: just as long as it takes that same government to make amends with the descendants of the millions of Indigenous Africans kidnapped and enslaved in this country.

Meanwhile we will all still be having our Juneteenths and Pow Wows and will still be passing down our stories because you can't kill the spirit, people.

New Album: Say You're Sorry

2011-04-30T12:56:00.000-04:00

So I have been going into the recording studio of late to work on my next poetry album, which I have affectionately dubbed my "angry album." I am collaborating on this album with a talented musician by the name of Nik Ritchie. He is also recording the album.

The centerpiece of the album is a poem I have been working on for some time called "Say You're Sorry: A Rant About Slavery" I decided quite a while ago that as a country we were never going to become anti-racist until we dealt with our shameful history. American racism was born out of our horrific history of slavery and genocide. The land was stolen from the Indigenous people, many of whom were slaughtered, and then Africans were stolen from their homelands and brought in chains to experience hundreds of years of what can only be described as one of the greatest acts of inhumanity in the history of the human being.

But we don't talk about this. The history books I grew up reading made light of slavery. The history books still in circulation when I became a teacher still failed to engage the history of slavery in any sustained way. Current discussions of racism or race relations continue to fail to engage this important issue.

So I am writing this poem and making this album and hoping to start a conversation on slavery and its aftermath. The final poem will be epic in length. Here is an excerpt from one chapter on lynching:

Say you're sorry that the lynching of blacks

Was a form a of recreation

A national pastime in our country

An outing for the whole family

Complete with food and drinks

Say you're sorry the thousands of Black people

Hung up, burned alive

Tortured castrated

Was entertainment for whites

Say you’re sorry it wasn’t

Just an abberant minority of white men

Wasn’t just the White Knights of Columbus

Or the Klux Klux Clan

Operating under the cover of darkness

Say you're sorry it was whole communities

Law enforcement city mayors

Jailers and judges, legislators,

Upstanding white men

Say you’re sorry antil-ynching legislation

Was defeated in the US Senate

Again and again

In 1922 1937 and 1940

While black bodies hung

While Black bodies burned

Say you're sorry mutilated black bodies

Were hung from flagpoles and rooftops

White racism’s “old glory”

Yes We Did! (for my students)

2011-04-11T17:00:00.002-04:00

Yes, we did

For my students

When I got the job offer

People told me not to take it

Said The South

Is too racist sexist homophobic

For someone like me

They might have been right

But I came here anyway

Told them it may be that way now

But I’m gonna change it

I will teach those racists

How to love Black and Brown people

I said

I will teach those sexists how to love women and girls

I said

I will teach those homophobes

How to love The Queers

And I will gather up

The Young Ones

Teach them to rebel

Against the hatred of their elders

And together all the young ones

They will change things

Yes they will

Its been 7 years

And I changed things

Yes, I did.

Maybe not enough

To save my own skin

But we changed things

Yes we did

My students and I made a difference

We changed things, yes we did!

Taking Back the Night

2011-03-25T02:54:00.000-04:00

Tonight the National Organization of Women (NOW), organized a "Take Back the Night" march at the University of Central Florida. They worked with the Student Government Association, the Multicultural Student Center, and other campus organizations and were successful in bringing out a couple hundred students to the event.

Marches to "Take Back the Night" have been held for many years in many cities throughout the world to call attention to the high rates of violence against women. Feminists in the 1960s began to hold these marches composed entirely of women at night to protest the fact that women could not feel safe walking the streets at night. By coming together, shouting, and chanting without men to protect them, these women were able to symbolically reclaim space. The Take Back the Night events provided platforms for women to denounce the high incidence of rape in our country while also empowering themselves through testimony and the dissemination of information.

I attended my first "Take Back the Night" march when I was a college student. I am fortunate that because I am now a professor I have students who continue to organize such events and who invite me to participate.

I read a few of my poems at the event. Here is the poem, "Rape: A State of Emergency"

The Demands of Existence

2011-03-20T21:42:00.000-04:00

Demands of Existence

If I told you to do the impossible

To fight the impossible fight

To pursue the impossible dream

If I told you it was the only thing that would

Make you possible

Would you do it?

If I told you your life was absurd

And unfair and that the cards would be stacked

Ridiculously against you

But that you should live nonetheless

That you must live nonetheless

Would you do it?

If I set wolves at your door and

Snakes in your bed

If I made your neighbors vultures

And your enemies your only friends

If I gave you but a stone for a pillow

And a shack for a home

And told you to awaken each morning

With a plan

To wake each morning

Determined to live

Would you do it?

If I gave you but one hawks feather to pray with

And 7 rocks set in a circle for a temple

If your flock was a ragged and desperate band of thieves

Your children thugs and your own mother addicted to drugs

Would you have the strength to lead them?

Would you have the heart to love them?

Would you have the humility to call yourself one of them?

To claim their faults as your own?

If I colored you black or red and set you down in this white world

If I shaped you woman and set you down in this man’s world

If I fashioned you queer and set you down in this straight world

If I told you to do the impossible

To fight the impossible fight

To pursue the impossible dream

If I told you it was the only thing that would

Make you possible

Would you do it?

Why You Must Vote

2010-11-01T16:45:00.000-04:00

1. So you will have less to complain about next month

2. So you will have the right to complain about anything next month

3. To keep the crazies out of office

4. To prove you are not a nihilist

5. To demonstrate by your actions that you actually believe in participatory democracy

6. To prove the old folks- who say all young folk are apathetic slackers- wrong

7. So you can walk around all day with your "I voted" sticker proudly displayed, gloating and boasting about your implied political astuteness

8. So you can avoid coming up with a convincing lie to tell you friends and families when they ask you if you voted

9. Because Obama said to and he is commander in chief (if you believe in commanders in chief, that is).

10. To avoid letting the people who believe the world is about to end, who have already voted, and are voting in large numbers (because of their paranoia) to determine your future

11. To save soldiers. Historically, every time we have a Republican president or Republican majority in Congress there have been more wars and more loss of life.

12. To keep the Tea parrtiers out of office (Imagine Palin as your next president and then decide how safe it is to sit out this election)

13. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Reproductive rights, healthcare reform, immigration, the economy, etc.

14. To keep the corporations from controlling our country (Ask David Koch)

15. Because you claim you are anti-racist

16. Because women died slow painful deaths by starvation in their protests calling for female suffrage

17. Because countless black Americans died so that all Americans could vote regardless of color, race, or creed

18. So our future can be better than our past

19. To increase the odds of having a representative who actually votes the way you want them to some percentage of the time. however small.

Some Wounds (a new poem)

2010-08-05T18:17:00.000-04:00

Some Wounds

There are some wounds that never heal

No amount of tending pretending

Careful concentrated concern

Nor Positive neglect release of regret

Some sores nothing erases nothing cures

Bandages don’t hide scars refuse to fade

Some wounds are for life

Testimony to strife tell on us

Broadcast to the world

Accusations in the flesh

Let everybody know what got left

What was undone what mourning

Song was sung what can’t be forgot

What and who after all we have become

There are some wounds

Red gashes of pain

raised black and brown

Welts remain some scars

That grow larger not smaller

With time.

Some wounds that mark us

Stain the soul, set one forever apart

Cause people to stare and start

Some wounds that can’t be glanced at

Never become commonplace, happenstance

Never get replaced by glory funny stories

The champion’s parade

Never become red badges of courage.

And these are the wounds

Nobody talks about

Everybody sees

These are the wounds nobody wants

Everybody runs from nobody seeks

Everybody shuns

Which is why

These are the wounds that never heal

We refuse to believe they’re even real

It seems easier somehow

Never mind the screaming bleeding tirades

In the end we just refuse

to be marked

By something we can’t change rearrange

Overcome unravel or defeat

Still

There are some wounds that never heal

Wounds that are for life

Testimony to strife

Evidence in the flesh

Let everybody know what succumbed/what died

What did and didn’t survive

What and who after all we have become

Ordinary People Making a Difference: Hands Across the Sands, Green Energy Congress,

2010-07-04T00:05:00.000-04:00

Lately it seems like people have been busier than ever trying to address global warming, peak oil, fossil fuels, and the need to transition to a greener economy. The oil spill in the gulf has killed a lot of fish and fowl. Maybe we needed to see that to wake up? As Americans? Whatever it takes, people...

As for myself, I have been busy of late with various green activities. I participated in "Hands Across the Sands" last Saturday to protest offshore drilling, attended the Clean Energy Congress in Tallahassee on Monday and Tuesday, calling on the Fl. legislature to hold a special session on renewable energy this summer, and I attended a Transition Town meeting in Orlando today. All of this "greenwork" has got me thinking about oh so many things. And it has given me hope.

As an educator I cannot help but ask myself how I can contribute to the dissemination of knowledge about how to live more efficiently, more sustainably, how to prepare for a post-peak oil future, and how to turn this planet into something the seventh generation can use. Fortunately I am far from alone. Many people are asking themselves the same question.

I have been reading a number of books on green energy, climate change, sustainability, community farming, etc (see images) and several facts really stood out for me:

The first one concerns public perception of the problem. According to an article in the Worldwatch Institute book, "2010 State of the World: Transforming Cultures from Consumerism to Sustainability"):

1. "Seventy percent of Americans already believe that climate change is a problem and 51% view it as a serious problem." (studies performed by Yale and George Mason Universities, p. 154)

So it is not just a bunch of anti-establishment hippies living on the fringe of society who are concerned about the future of the planet (though we need to thank the hippies for making us all more aware of the problem). Most people are now concerned. What's more, most of the world is making serious changes to transition to a greener, more energy-efficient, less-polluted future. Unfortunately, the United States lags behind most of the rest of the world in terms of making changes.

Africa, for example, is the first region to develop and launch a 10- year Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) program ("2010 State of the World," p. 120)

"Over the last four years, China has apparently reduced its carbon emissions, even while its economy grew 7% annually, using subsidy phaseouts for coal, market pricing for fuels, and new energy conservation policies." ("Eco-Economy,"p. 101)

In 2008, the European Union approved a "package to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, improve energy efficiency by 20 percent, and achieve a 20-percent share for renewables by 2020." ("2010 State of the World," p. xxii)

What about us? What are we doing?

"The U.S. holds less than 5 % of the world's population but produces nearly 25 percent of carbon emissions and has played the role of saboteur by failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels." ("Oil and the Future of Energy, p. 21)

Its a sad story, people....

But not to worry. While our political and economic leaders may not be doing enough, we as a people are busy! Many Americans are involved in one way or another with envisioning a better future for the planet.

Thousands of people came out to hold "Hands Across the Sands" at beaches and deserts all over the planet in response to the horrendous oil spill in the gulf. With little advance notice or time to organize, a movement took place in which strangers all around the world gathered on beaches and held hands to protest offshore drilling and to call for a move to green energy. On the little corner of New Smyrna Beach where I went we easily had a couple hundred people. It was exhilerating and empowering!

Only a few days later environmentalists, activists, community gardeners, solar power businessmen, and educators from every part of Florida gathered in the state capitol of Tallahassee in the House Chambers for a Clean Energy Congress to discuss and vote on a solution to our current use of fossil fuels and the damage it is causing to the planet and the economy. The congress met for two days and put forth several important proposals for policies on solar energy, electric cars, a ban on offshore drilling, a 20/20 RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standards) for Florida, grants and rebates for alternative grid and fuel systems, and a green energy education policy designed to educate children, university students, businesses, and communities about sustainability and energy efficiency. Like the "Hands across the Sands" event, this event was organized in a short amount of time but 120 delegates showed up and we were productive.

The oil spill in the gulf is a tragedy but it has galvanized activity and inspired people to get busy trying to transition us into a green economy. Keep up the good work, people!!!!

As for me, I have my mother (Michaele Lee Davis) to thank for raising my awareness at an early age about the importance of treading lightly on the earth. As one of the original environmentalists (AKA hippie) my mom had us doing organic gardening, washing our hair in the rain, heating up our water with a solar water heater and buying local when I was just a child of 9.

She taught me to respect animals and plants, not to take up too much space, and to avoid getting caught up in American materialism. I may not have learned well all the lessons she taught me but I am trying...

Thanks Mom.

Grandma

2010-04-04T13:34:00.000-04:00

Grandma

When I asked

Grandma said, “Tell stories”

And I don’t know

What kind of stories

And should they be written?

Or Told?

Novels or poems?

My grandmother’s

Or my own?

When I was young she used to tell stories

From books

And from memory

I don’t remember them

I was too young

And didn’t know myself then

I learned history from a book

But

When I asked her

The most important question

When I asked her

After she was gone

About my purpose

She came all the way back

To respond

She said,

“Tell stories”

Cousin Sarah

2010-03-06T18:19:00.000-05:00

Cousin Sarah

Cousin Sarah was seven
Blonde and blue-eyed
She was the grandchild
Grandma Eleanor wanted
Born fifteen years after
The three babies
She refused to claim

But Sarah was only seven
When she said it
Told her best friend
Her cousin “wasn’t really a bad guy”
Even though I looked black
And all the blacks
On TV “sneak around,
Kill people, and steal
And stuff”

I wasn’t really “a bad guy”
She explained
To her white friend
Not completely
See
Because
I was only half black
Not really black

Brown
Don’t you see?
Her friend preened,
Looked at me closely

Sarah was only seven
I was twenty-two with a physics degree
And a fancy Stanford job
But suddenly I was the master’s
Bastard talking to
My clearly superior
Half-sibling on the plantation

Even a child
Knows the order of things

Racism

2010-02-24T22:15:00.000-05:00

I am angry this week about racism. Racism I dare not name, racism I cannot protest. Racism nobody will admit exists. I feel silenced, stifled, unsafe. I feel rage. I want to complain, to speak up, to shout out, to resist. But I am alone, I have no allies. I am like a crazy lady in a crowd yelling fire when nobody else can see the smoke. I know I should run or yell but the crowd prevents me, the crowd threatens, the crowd pushes in, the angry faces hover above mine. I fear being arrested or trampled. I watch the smoke rise in curls around me and I don't know what to do.

I watch people around me, both conservatives and progressives, unite in their racism: their racism ultimately transcends their other political differences. I am shocked and disappointed but know I shouldn’t be. I know I should have seen all of this coming but somehow I am never prepared, somehow I never adjust to such behavior. I just can’t get used to racism no matter how many times I am confronted with it.

I can't

I won't

Haiti: We Must ALL Help

2010-01-22T19:18:00.006-05:00

Tuesday, January 12, at 4:53 p.m. a 7.0 earthquake hit 10 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Current estimates by the Haitian government suggest that 200,000 may have died already, 80,000 have been buried in mass graves by bulldozers, and millions others are injured; most are unable to obtain medical treatment. Surgeons are amputating limbs with hack saws and no anesthesia; people not killed in the quake are dying from dehydration and treatable infections. Millions are homeless.

The people of Haiti are suffering

What can we do to help?

On January 20th, another earthquake hit; this one a 6.1 on the richter scale.

The people of Haiti are suffering

What will we do?

Before the earthquake, Haiti was already ranked as "the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of its people living below the poverty line and 54% existing in abject poverty." (The Week, 1-15-10)

40% of the population of Haiti is comprised of children.

Aren't the children of Haiti our children too?

Before the earthquake the life expectancy for the average Haitian was only 60. According to the World Food Program 1.9 million people in Haiti "were ‘food insecure’, meaning they needed assistance to stave off hunger" before the quake and only 50% of the population had access to safe drinking water prior to the devastation wrought by the quake.

Haiti has been suffering for a long time

Shouldn't we have been helping them for a long time now?

Everyone is jumping on the "collect donations for Haiti" bandwagon. It makes more sense to donate to organizations who are already in Haiti, have been working for Haiti for years, are run by local agencies, or who have financial profiles that show their money goes to the victims not to the administrators. Consider giving to one of the following organizations:

Doctors Without Borders has been in Haiti for 20 years and needs donations to provide crucial medical treatment and supplies; they only spend 1% of their funding on management.

Quisqueya International Organization for Freedom and Development, founded by a former Peace Corps volunteer, is on-the-ground, assisting with relief efforts; QIFD is a nonprofit organization that works on the grassroots level to advance political, economic and social rights by working with community organizations to empower poor people to help themselves;

Yele Haiti, a grassroots organization set up by Grammy-winning musician Wyclef Jean, a native Haitian, whose programs have used music, sports and the media to create 3,000 new jobs, put 7,000 children in school, feed 8,000 people a month, and provide HIV/AIDS prevention education to 2,000 young people a month.

The Pan American Development Foundation is the disaster relief arm of the Organization of American States. It has been in Haiti for over 30 years, and currently has over 150 people on the ground there. Go here to make an online donation or call 877-572-4484;

Partners in Health (Paul Farmer's organization) has been on the ground in Haiti for over 20 years. To support its efforts with a donation, go here;

Action Against Hunger has mobilized an emergency response and has teams already on the ground, assessing and responding to needs;Recognized as a world leader in the fight against hunger and malnutrition, the ACF International Network has pursued its vision of a world without hunger for three decades.

CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, also needs donations for its on-ground work in Haiti;

Habitat for Humanity has been working in Haiti for 26 years and will be sending a team to assess the impact on affordable housing after the earthquake. To make a donation, go here

The United Nations World Food Program has teams "already on the scene, mobilizing emergency food assistance to families." To support these efforts, you can make an emergency donation here;

Staff from the United Nations Foundation is currently on the ground, and its United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) is accepting donations toward these relief and recovery efforts. Donations can be made online here.

Dreaming of Haiti

Lush green, people singing

Children running in the streets

I try to fly away at night

To this ancestral land

Where the people’s eyes shine

America will have me

But Haiti knows me

From the marrow

Loves me from the soul

And Haiti waits for me I know

(photo from Belpoz Haiti Phoot Album. www.belpoz.com

Have You Seen Any Indians?

2010-01-02T19:46:00.020-05:00

When I was interviewing for my current job in Florida, I asked the host institution to arrange

for me to meet with other Native and Black faculty. They had me meet with an old white man wearing feathers who interspersed his authenticity questions about my heritage with anecdotes about all the ceremonial objects he had acquired from Indians. In his office he actually had a number of sacred objects on display on bookshelves on top of books. He took them to class for show and tell, he explained.

I was too busy clenching my teeth to ensure that the smoke did not escape to ask him the

only question he was in a position to answer,

"Have you seen any Indians?"

After getting hired and relocating to Florida, I heard rumors of an Indian professor on campus who reportedly also had a gig as a judge back home (somewhere in the Southwest) As a result he was rarely seen on campus. After five years of not meeting him I became convinced he was merely a myth.

Then I met another mixedblood Black/Indian in a faculty workshop and we practically knocked people over trying to claim each other in some mad spastic rush to recognize each other as kindred. It was hilarious only because it was so pathetic.

He too had heard about the mythical judge but like me, he had never met him. "We should start a Native faculty group," he said. "Yeah, we should," I replied, knowing full well two people does not an organization make. "We might need to find the other Indians to do that," I suggested. He assented and then we both sighed.

Neither one of us had seen any other Indians.

Mostly when I want to see Indians I drive down south to the reservation to hang with my peoples. Its always a good time but four hours is a long way to drive in search of Indians so I began looking locally.

I started going to Pow Wows in the area. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and found them peopled by non-Indians in Indian garb. I brought a white friend who had never been to a Pow Wow and because she is a shopper she insisted on visiting all of the vendor booths that circled the arena. Since I had nothing better to do I joined her. Big mistake.

In every booth for four booths in a row somebody felt the need to say something anti-Indian to me. All the vendors were white men and I was wearing my Seminole jacket and had my hair in braids. A caustic combo apparently. After four stops and four insults I told my friend I wanted to sit out the shopping expedition. She understood. In fact she was shocked by all the bad behavior.

She turned to me and asked in all sincerity why a person who hates Indians would sell Indian artifacts and go to Pow Wows for a living?

Good question, my friend. I wish I didn't know the answer. I wish I was blissfully ignorant. It would be so much easier.

"They act like that because they don't like Indians," I told her. "Just Indian stuff. Dead Indian stuff."

I went home still wondering where all the Indians in Central Florida were.

Then I heard about this Spiritualist camp. The religion of spiritualism shares many beliefs with Native American religions and it turns out that the founder of one particular Florida settlement claimed to have been led by Native American spirits to the tract of land. Many early Spiritualists wrote books they channeled from Native American spirits and most of the mediums in the settlement claimed to have Indian Spirit Guides. In general, Native American culture and beliefs appeared to be held in high regard in this community.

Or so I thought.

Then I met church members who were holding ceremonies and organizing their own tribe. They called themselves Indians, burned sage, and had monthly meetings compete with drums and dancing. They seemed harmless enough- hobbyists perhaps?- until they began to actively try to get federal status as a tribe. Why become a tribe? They wanted to be able to become healing practitioners, to bill themselves as medicine men and women, to give mediumistic readings without following state laws regulating such practices and they wanted to sell Indian items without paying taxes. They openly pitched this ability to make money as Indians to potential recruits as the benefits of joining their "tribe."

Nobody invited me to join their tribe (somehow they knew better) but I overheard their recruitment speech one day at a church event.

My mouth dropped so far so fast it took a week to close it. Were they serious? Did they really think they had a right as white people to benefit from treaty obligations the federal government had with tribes as a result of stealing land? And why so shameless? How can people claim to love Indians and want to exploit them? Oh, right, they don't love Indians, just Indian ways.

So just when I had resigned myself to making the four hour drive to the rez, I got schooled on where all the Indians were.....

There had been a rash of small time burglaries in the community, all committed by white men against the residents late at night. Then, the unthinkable happened: tourists visiting the Camp in broad daylight were robbed on the street by armed gunmen.

Word spread like wildfire: this small time spiritual community was no longer safe. Officers in the Religious Association began sending out emails to the membership alerting the residents to the danger and advising them on how to be safe. An email went out describing a "suspicious looking black man" prowling the area. Only later did an email go out informing people that the armed gunmen and women were all white.

Next an email went out advising residents to talk to their neighbors and to be alert. It was suggested that people begin to employ a codeword to alert one another when a dangerous person was nearby. Guess what code phrase the Association Officer recommended?

She suggested, "Have You Seen Any Indians?"

THANKSGIVING and Native American Views of Pilgrims

2009-11-26T13:11:00.001-05:00

NANEPASHEMET, late Wampanoag Historian talks about Pilgrims

Give Water, People!

2009-10-23T18:55:00.013-04:00

Give a little, change a lot. Got ten bucks? Want to save some lives? Give Water

More than 1 in 6 people in the world don't have access to safe drinking water.
1 out of every 4 deaths under the age of 5 worldwide is due to a water-related disease.
Nearly 80% of illnesses in developing countries are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions.
Lack of water claims more lives than any war
Every day more than 4,000 children in developing countries die, simply because they don't have clean drinking water
More children die from diarrheal illnesses like cholera and dysentery than from HIV/AIDS or malaria combined.
But, for only $10, you can fix that for one person... for ten years!

Donate ten dollars to the Water Project and provide water for one person for ten years. It doesn't get any simpler than that. Give Water, people!

Need more info?

Check out The Water Challenge Video

What all the Fuss is About: Universal Healthcare and Who is Against It

2009-08-26T19:49:00.006-04:00

A couple weeks ago we saw news coverage of seemingly out of control protestors pushing their way into senator-organized town hall meetings to fight against Universal Health Care. We have seen footage of protestors with signs adorned with swastikas, of protestors sporting weapons at the public meetings of congress members and our president. Ugly caricatures have been drawn of Obama and elaborate stories about "death panels" and state-sponsored medical neglect of the sick have circulated.

I have personally received numerous alarmist emails and seen inflammatory ad campaigns portraying universal health care as the newest evil in the land. Who is afraid of free healthcare exactly?

If all of this outcry was coming from the citizenry of this country it would be something to worry about. I might begin to wonder if perhaps somehow giving everybody free medical care could be detrimental in some way.

But this outcry is not coming from American citizens. These protests and these ad campaigns have not been organized by grassroots organizations despite the misleading rhetoric to that effect. These anti-Universal Healthcare campaigns have been organized and funded by those likely to be harmed by the elimination of medicine-for-profit- the corporate health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. These protests are all about Big Business making big money off of sick people.

They have a reason to be scared. Their bottom line is at stake. The rest of us- those of us who will be receiving free medical care- have nothing to fear. Who knows, we might actually be able to get better without going broke for a change. Imagine that.

We are the only industrialized country in the world who practices medicine-for-profit. In other words, we are the only country among those who can afford to offer its citizenry free healthcare who doesn't.

Its time we caught up with the rest of the Industrialized world, people. Its time we started taking care of our sick. Its time we started putting the well-being of our citizenry before the profit margin of corporations.

I Want to Know What It Feels like to Be Free

2009-07-22T19:33:00.006-04:00

I am watching Soledad O'Brian on CNN. She is the Black/Hispanic/mixedrace anchor who is responsible for producing the "Black In America" show which aired a while back. She is about to air Black in America Two" tonight. In the meantime she is interviewing accomplished African Americans about their role models, their mentors, how they became so accomplished.

The first guest on her show was Professor Henry Louis Gates who talked about being arrested this week by a "rogue/racist" white cop in Harvard Square in his own house. A neighbor reported seeing "two black men" trying to break into a house in the prestigious neighborhood near the University and the police responded.

When the police arrived to find the University professor inside his home they asked him for identification. Dr. Gates made the mistake of requiring them to present their identification as well. After getting their badge numbers ad giving him his ID, proving he was the owner of the house and accusing the officer of racial profiling, he was arrested and charged with "disorderly conduct."

It is a bit difficult to imagine that the distinguished 58 year old scholar, one of the best known and most published black scholars in the country, who standing at only 5'7", weighing 150 lbs, and walking with a cane could have intimidated the three officers present. Dr. Gates reports it was only the intervention of the one black officer who prevented him from having to try to walk with his arms handcuffed behind his back, something that as a disabled man, he would have been incapable of doing without falling.

The rogue cop filed a report full of spurious and false claims but the charges were later dropped although the Cambridge police refuses to admit to any wrongdoing and claims race was not a factor. Numerous black professors would beg to differ. They too have been stopped by Cambridge police for daring to be black on the campus of the most prestigious university in the country. Their white colleagues have not suffered similar fates.

As a professor of African American ancestry I have also been treated in ways my white colleagues never have. I am a success story. I am professor of philosophy. I have become what my grandmother never could have become, no matter how brilliant she was. I am proof of the progress we have made as a race, as a country on the subject of racism. I have had opportunities my Black father never had and I am grateful for this.

We have a black/mixedrace president now. We have Black and Latino news anchors, congresspeople, and businessfolk. We have a Latina woman soon to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. Her mother never could have achieved that goal no matter how hard she worked. We have come a long way.

But events in recent weeks remind us that we also have a long way to go. Despite my having a PH.D. from the top-rated University in the world (UCBerkeley) I am on the receiving end of racism on a regular basis. Despite his accomplishments, Dr. Gates was arrested. Despite being the most qualified nominee in a hundred years, Sotomayor experienced racism at the hands of white male congressmen during confirmation hearings. President Obama has had so many threats against his life (more than Lincoln when he was threatening to abolish slavery) he has had to be under more extreme security than any other president in history. Its good to have opportunities, it would be better to be treated as if we deserved them.

Soledad's next guest was a famous national radio show host, Bev Smith. She talked about coming from a long line of African American forebears who fought for justice. Soledad asked her to comment on the remarks of a little boy who was one of the 60 black and latino summer campers who were subjected to racist remarks and ejected from a private pool in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago. The little boy said he didn't think this kind of thing could happen in America when we have a black president. Bev Smith said, Well we have a lot of symbols, Soledad. We have Obama, we have Oprah, we have am African American professor at Harvard, we have you on CNN... and that's good but that's not enough.

"I am tired of symbols," she said. " I want to know what it feels like to be free."

I agree with Bev. I, too, want to know what it feels like to be free.

When will that be?

The New Earth: Headed For More Heart

2009-07-14T15:16:00.013-04:00

The thunder is rumbling in the distance as I eat the homemade oatmeal and blueberry pancakes I cooked on my new griddle today. I started the day out listening to the Sotomayer hearings but had to turn the news off after she was forced to sacrifice "heart" as a valuable component of decision-making.

I understand the fears of her (mostly male) colleagues. After all, as a country we have been led by logicians and masculine authoritarians for our entire history. We have been led by men compelled to subscribe to our culturally-constructed definition of masculinity: a construct that requires dichotomic thinking, the vilification of emotion, and engagement in competitive ego battles. No room for heart there.

But its time for a change.

The origin of the original "heart" statement now being used by senators to question the nominee, was our president. Some time ago, while responding to a question on how he would nominate judges, Obama said that in 95 percent of Supreme Court decisions, “the law is pretty clear…. But it’s those 5 percent of the cases that really count. And in those 5 percent of the cases, what you got to look at is: What is in the justice’s heart?

"What’s their broader vision of what America should be?.... we need somebody who’s got the heart … the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young, teenaged mom; the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.”

I agree with the man! Let's hear it for more heart!

Obama does not define his manhood the way men most in America do. And this is part of his appeal. He is not afraid to talk about emotion, to have a strong , equally-educated, extremely successful wife. He does not feel the need to prove he is a "real man" by talking endlessly about "victory" in Iraq. He tells complete strangers he loves them. He has empathy. And that is one of the reasons I voted for him. The masculinist focus of the last 200 years has NOT served us.

Most men in this country get punished for not behaving in a way that is consistent with societal norms of masculinity. Hence the recent rash of suicides by small boys who were being verbally bullied by their classmates who called them "faggots" and "sissies" while their teachers looked the other way. One mother defended her son. "He played football. He tried to fit in" (i.e. he tried to follow the "act like a boy" rules). His efforts did not save him. He had too much heart.

Meanwhile, off in the peace-touting, lovey-dovey corners of the earth, many are talking in glowing terms about an uplifting in consciousness- the creation of a New Earth where so much more is possible.

More Americans are interested in spirituality than ever, there has been a huge growth in green consciousness, and the younger generation is much less invested in perpetuating racism, sexism, classism and other ubiquitous forms of oppression. Young people are claiming gay and transgender identities earlier in life and demands for freedom are being made worldwide. And we elected a mixed-race black Hawaiian who has heart and are about to confirm a wise Latina as a Supreme Court justice.

With change comes resistance. Kicking and screaming is inevitable during times of accelerated growth and we should not be put off by it. A new, improved earth is on the way, one filled with heart, wise latinas, sensitive men, happy gay people, black people in power, animals free from abuse, healthy food, the flourishing of a green planet and the expansion of consciousness.

So, I am not going to worry. My high-fiber, high in antioxident, organic pancakes taste good and I am not frightened by the sound of booming thunder in the distance.

Michael Jackson and the New Racism

2009-07-09T15:44:00.022-04:00

It hasn't been easy following the news coverage of MJ's death. The man's body was not yet cold when the mud-slinging began. Allegations of drug abuse and repeated references to charges he was acquitted of in 2005 dominated early reports.

Eventually so many people complained about it that CNN changed its programing. Despite the fact that millions worldwide were paying tribute to the man in the streets, VH1, MTV, and BET, along with other news sources stopped covering the pop star's life early on. Some people complained that they didn't want to keep hearing about Michael Jackson because they wanted to hear world news.

But as my brilliant sister so eloquently put it, when people in every country on the planet are mourning your death and celebrating your life, you ARE world news.

Every single white person I know, without exception, had something negative to say about this man before he was buried. Without exception.

People working in the morgue where his body was examined "leaked" the graphic details of the state of his corpse to the press.

Old rumors that he bleached his skin because he wanted to be white resurfaced and were repeated as if they were the gospel.

Long drawn-out narratives of his 2005 trial implying he was guilty, despite the fact that he was acquitted of all 14 counts by a conservative, upper-class, overwhelmingly white jury, were repeated on every channel.

Before his young children had a chance to deal with the shocking loss of their father, news reporters were claiming they were too white to be the biological children of Michael.

White addicts I know and white doctors claiming to be experts in addiction have been quick to label him an addict (before any toxicology report is out), pretending there was no real distinction between taking an anesthetic for insomnia and taking heroin or drinking alcohol to get high and escape your problems.

We have not seen this type of treatment in the death of white stars and we won't. You don't have to be a fan of Michael Jackson's to care about this story. You just have to be someone who is intolerant of racism.

This is the new racism. It is hard to pin down. It is more subtle than the racism some of us grew up with. People don't call colored folk nigg*%s! anymore. They find other ways to question and undermine everything a black or brown person does. I know because I experience it on a regular basis.

Its ugly, its insidious and its ubiquitous.

It is the tone of voice that shop clerks, bank clerks, co-workers use to talk to you. Its the lack of respect given for one's life, one's needs, one's family, one's schedule. Its the insinuations that you are lacking, are not good enough, do not deserve something you have, do not belong where you are. It is the automatic doubting of the veracity of any story you tell about your life. It is the ever-present unfounded suspicion. It is the repeated challenge to your authority no matter your position or your education. This is the face of the new racism. Its harder to prosecute but it still exists, it still damages lives. It still crushes the souls of black folk.

Normally we respect the dead. Normally we treat those in mourning with respect. Normally we say good things about the dead. There is even a social taboo regarding speaking ill of the dead. We wait until they have been buried awhile before we dish the dirt.

But when a black person does good in this country white people get mad. They don't always know how to express this anger and in truth many may not be aware of the depth of their rage or its origin. But the expression of this rage is so evident whenever a black person succeeds in a big way in this country. Especially if his or her accomplishments eclipse those of whites.

Normally when a candidate of an opposing party wins an election people are frustrated, disappointed, maybe even angry. But when Obama ran for office, people weren't just disappointed, they were violent. It was ugly. Acts of hate speech and hate violence spiked during and after his campaign, according to the FBI. Gun sales skyrocketed in the days following his election. I personally heard more racist hate speech and experienced more discreet acts of subtle racism during that campaign than I had experienced during the last twenty years (accounts of some of these incidents can be found in my blog archive)

The explicit and dire acts of racist violence have died down but the new racism continues unabated. We are not now a non-racist country, racism has simply morphed. Racists find new and more creative ways to explain their bad behavior towards people with pigment. The disrespectful way in which Jackson's death and corpse were treated is just one example of this new racism.

Just a quick review of this week's news reveals the ubiquity of this new racism:

A white firefighter is testifying against Porto Rican Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for "reverse discrimination" after the Supreme Court upheld his case this week. One form of the new racism is the claim that all Black folks of note or in power are reverse racists. It's not enough for us to pretend that whites are no longer responsible for racism or its impact on the lives of blacks and browns, now they have to turn racism into a black thing.

Black children were forced to hear racist comments from white private swim club members, to watch all the white children exit the pool when they got in, and then were ejected from a swimming pool in Philadelphia after paying $1900 to swim, because, according to the club employee, they were ruining the "complexion" of the club. What is the likely defense? It had nothing to do with race.

But back to the world news: Michael Jackson.

White people and non-white people alike have accused Michael Jackson of "wanting to be white." ever since his skin started to lighten in the '90s. As soon as he died this rumor began re-surfacing with a vengeance. Its as if nobody can believe that a black man could be that talented and that successful without wanting to be white.

The man modeled himself heavily after great black music and dance legends like James Brown, the Supremes, and Diana Ross; he had black stars in all his videos; he was the first black artist to desegregate MTV, he was the first to portray Egyptians as Black people, he wrote about racism, and accused his own record label of being racist. He was the first American to raise millions of dollars for Africans and he gave millions to the United Negro College Fund, among many other charities. He was the only major pop star ever to positively portray Native Americans, Africans, and South American Indigenous folk in his videos. And despite all this evidence of his love for Black and Brown people, when he came on national TV, on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1993 (yes, 16 years ago!) and told the world he had a disfiguring skin disease that turned his skin white nobody believed him.

It is racism that makes us think it preposterous that a black person would love his blackness.

Last week Deepak Chopra, a famous Indian physician and author, confirmed that Michael had vitiligo.

Last night his white dermatologist, Dr. Arnie Klein in an interview with Larry King, once again confirmed that the star had vitiligo and that it was so widespread and severe that "depigmentation treatment" was his only option. Ne did not bleach his skin to look white. He got a treatment for a serious skin disease that had already caused depigmentation. The treatment resulted in the loss of his remaining pigment.

Why was his own explanation doubted? Why did everyone assume a black man of mammoth talent and unparalleled success, who could dance and sing and write and produce better than any white person ever has, would want to be white?

The new racism.

He Tried to Heal the World: Tribute to the King of Pop

2009-06-26T16:34:00.020-04:00

Michael Jackson was more than the most talented entertainer of his generation.
He was more than a musician of genius level- talent and epic accomplishments.
He was more than an innovator, a trail-blazer and a trendsetter
Though certainly most men would settle for being any one of these things.
Still he was more even than all of these things.

He was a change agent.
He was a messenger of love and hope.
In his art, he sought not just to entertain but to change the world, to make it a better place:

"We`re on a mission
In the everlasting light
That shines a revelation...
We`re gonna shake it up and break it up
We`re sharing light brighter than the sun
Hello, good times
We`re here to simulate, eliminate
And congregate, illuminate"

(We Are Here to Change the World)

Like most love warriors, he paid a heavy price for his efforts. He was accused of crimes, robbed of his fortune, and despite being vindicated by a court that ruled he was "innocent on all counts" suffered for years as a result of recurrent aspersions against his character. He was a tragic character, a victim despite his brilliance, a target despite how much he was loved by people all around the world. He wrote about what was done to him in his History Album:

"Tired of injustice
Tired of the schemes
The lies are disgusting
So what does it mean
Kicking me down"
(Scream)

Despite it all, he continued writing, singing, dancing. He turned his grief into art. In his song, "They Don't Really Care About Us" he turned his personal trials and tribulations into a video about racism, police brutality, and the high levels of incarceration of black and brown men. Even in his despair, he made art that brought people together and educated his fans about racial injustice:

"Beat me, hate me
You can never break me
Will me, thrill me
You can never kill me
Chew me, sue me
Everybody do me
Kick me hit me
Dont you black or
white me! "
(They don't Care About Us)

At five years old, I was dancing with a group of children in the playground at Hull House in Chicago to the the hit song "Rockin Robin." We even had a Rockin' Robin dance.

This amazing human being was far too young and his life, especially in the last few years was far too tragic but the legacy he left behind speaks for itself and no matter what his naysayers say, they cannot undo the magic he spun in the world during his brief incarnation among us.

At seven I recall crying when my mother played "Ben" and thinking about my dad when she played "I'll Be There."

Michael wasn't just a crossover artist, he was the first major artist to break down racial boundaries in music. He integrated MTV back when it was a "whites only" station with his blockbuster,"Thriller." He produced videos like "Remember the Time" which portrayed Egyptians as the Africans they were and not the white people that white American filmmakers have sought to portray them as. His "Bad" video had an anti-violence message. His "Man in the Mirror" video juxtaposed images of MLK, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, homeless Americans, and starving children in he Third World.

He was a great collaborator and brought artists of different races and cultures together to produce art and was the first American artist to raise millions of dollars for less fortunate people in Eastern Europe and Africa through his "Heal the World Foundation."

We Could Fly So High
Let Our Spirits Never Die
In My Heart
I Feel You Are All
My Brothers
Create A World With
No Fear
Together We'll Cry
Happy Tears
See The Nations Turn
Their Swords
Into Plowshares

(Heal the World)

When I was in Middle School, my friends and knew all the lyrics to his "Off the Wall" album. We sang the songs while we hung shyly against the wall, too shy to dance with each other at the school-sponsored dances.

He wrote and sang about racial injustice, environmental issues, war, hunger, homelessness, gang violence, genocide, AIDS. He challenged racial categories and anti-black police brutality. He tried with his art, to heal the world:

"We are here to change the world
Gonna change the world, Hee
We are here to change the world
Gonna change the world"

(We Are Here to Change the World/Captain EO)

When I was 17, working at a pre-school in Phoenix, I had a two-year old in my class who could dance and sing just like Michael. He was a Nursery school sensation. He was "bad" and he was white.

Before Native American beliefs about the oneness of al life were popularized by the New Age movement, Michael tried to get us to see our shared humanity:

"We're Sendin' Out
A Major Love
And This Is Our
Message To You
Message To You
The Planets Are Linin' Up
We're Bringin' Brighter Days
They're All In Line
Waitin' For You
Can't You See . . .?
You're Just Another Part Of Me . . "
(Another Part of Me)

I was in College when he wrote the "We are the World" lyrics, providing a positive alternative to Bandaid's subtly racist portrayal of Africa as ignorant and bereft of anything but hunger:

"There comes a time
When we head a certain call
When the world must come together as one
There are people dying
And it's time to lend a hand to life
The greatest gift of all

We can't go on
Pretneding day by day
That someone, somewhere will soon make a change
We are all a part of
God's great big family
And the truth, you know love is all we need"

(We Are the World)

He brought an anti-war and pro-environmental message to his music and thus to the millions of people around the world his music reached :

"What have we done to the world
Look what we've done ...
Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores "
(Earth Song)

When I was a graduate student in the 90s, Michael's incredibly moving "Earth Song" video came out and although I did not own a TV at the time, I somehow managed to get an invitation to somebody's house to see it. It made me cry and cry but it also filled me with hope. Michael tried to get us to recognize the kinship we share not only with each other across race and space but also with plants, animals, and the earth. I had never seen any artist in the mainstream make such an important appeal to the human race. Every child in every school should be shown this video every year of grade school until we change out ways:

"Hey, what about yesterday
What about us
What about the seas
What about us
The heavens are falling down
What about us
I can't even breathe
What about us
What about the bleeding Earth
What about us
Can't we feel its wounds
What about us
What about nature's worth
It's our planet's womb
What about us
What about animals
What about it
We've turned kingdoms to dust
What about us
What about elephants
What about us
Have we lost their trust
What about us
What about crying whales
What about us"

(Earth Song)

I remember so clearly seeing the "Black or White" video on TV, where he showed people of different races morphing into each other and talked about transracial love. As a mixed race product of a highly contested interracial union living in racially segregated Chicago, it gave me a glimpse of a future that I could belong to. Perhaps it was this song that inspired the poetry I write about coming together across race and despite racism. I know I owe a debt of gratitude to this amazing artist. His music was the soundtrack of the majority of my young life.

"See, It's Not About Races
Just Places
Faces
Where Your Blood
Comes From
Is Where Your Space Is
I've Seen The LIGHT
Get Duller
I'm Not Going To Spend
My Life Being A Color"

(Black or White)

"He say one day you will see
His place in world history"

(History)

When They Take the Professors You Know You are in Trouble

2009-06-25T14:35:00.008-04:00

A UK newspaper reports today that Iran has now arrested 70 professors who met with the opposition leader, Mousavi, recently. They also report that journalists are going missing in large numbers.

If you weren't already horrified , now is the time to panic about the state of affairs in Iran.

This is not just self- interest talking (I am, after all, a professor). This is a reaction based on history. Whenever republics start locking up intellectuals, things are officially spinning out of control in a very very bad way.

Cambodia under the Kmer Rouge

Bosnia under General Krstic

Rwanda

Darfur under al-Bashir

Germany under the Nazis.

When they start locking up professors, especially in a country like Iran where education is so highly esteemed, the world needs to take notice.

Fighting for Democracy in Iran

2009-06-20T19:10:00.007-04:00

The color green is associated with the heart chakra, the seat of love, symbolizing protection, harmony. It is also the color that protestors in Iran are wearing as they take to the streets to demand a recount in an election they say has been rigged.

As of today sate-sponsored violence against protestors is said to have resulted in 150 deaths. Foreign embassies throughout Tehran are taking in wounded. Hospitals report 19 killed today. Rumors on Twitter say houses are being raided and people are being dragged from their homes. Protestors claim that acid or liquid tear gas is being dropped on them from helicopters. Iran has blacked out the media.

More women than men have voted in the last few elections and they too are out on the street in large numbers They currently hold legally defined second class citizenship in Iran and the risks they face in protesting and being arrested are far greater than those faced by male protestors. Yet they take to the streets demanding their right to elect their own leader.

When we Americans had our votes stolen in 2000 we protested but not for long. We let a man- George W. Bush- that we did not elect rule as our president for four years. We think of ourselves as the greatest democracy but we let our election be stolen. Iranians are willing to die rather that have their vote not count. Perhaps we could learn a democracy lesson from these freedom-seeking people, members of one of the oldest civilizations in the world.

Mixed Roots Festival In LA Goes Well

2009-06-18T18:11:00.016-04:00

Just back from my jaunt across the US to the annual Mixed Roots Festival held in Los Angeles, California. Apart from the loss of my cellphone and a misfortune at the drycleaners, the trip was a big success. My beautiful god-daughters Bailey Rose and Blair Mahya Quinones joined me on the stage for our inaugural performance of intergenerational mixed poetry and I got to hang out with a bevy of talented mixed artists in sunny California. Life is good.

Though there could have been more attendees, the festival was a good time. The organizers, Mixed Chicks founders, Heidi and Fanshen were dedicated and hospitable as usual and the crowd was homey and ever so nice to look at! Highlights included the Loving Day party Friday night, complete with cake and soul train dancing lines, some tear-jerking films about the tragic mulatto, and some side-splitting comedy by a Black Italian with a bad attitude.

Jason Sublette, an excellent fiction writer, came back this year and created a wonderful display of "worldle word clouds" about the parents of mixed artists in order to visually "express feelings and thoughts of appreciation." The word clouds were beautiful and moving. I know my dad appreciated his. Jason's reading of chapter four of his novel was entertaining. His work is well-crafted if a little sinister. He explained that he was trying to challenge current stereotypes about nice, quiet, nerdy Asian American men by creating a Hapa Asian character who was athletic, aggressive, and a tad immoral. You did it, Jason-No stereotypes in your story!

Amazing performances were also shared by singer Jason Luckett and comedian Maija DiGiorgio at the "Mixed Unplugged" event Saturday night.

My god-daughters Bailey and Blair stayed with me in my hotel room, writing poems, laughing and preparing their rock star careers and the time I spent with them was the best time I have had in a long time. I have partied, I have performed, I have met and loved beautiful women, I have been fawned over by fans but none of this compares to quality time spent with these amazing young women. Lets hear it for the Quinones girls! Mixed race and proud. Beautiful and brilliant.

Can We Save the Earth by Gardening?

2009-05-03T22:54:00.003-04:00

I told my sister about my transition/recession garden and she said we should call them "Save the Earth" gardens. Its a mouthful but it makes sense.

Can we save the earth by planting gardens? We can try to and see what happens. At the very least we might produce enough oxygen to save our ozone, put people back in touch with nature and provide people with an alternative to cancer-producing food grown with pesticides.

Still, I wonder, will saving the planet be enough? Who is going to save us? Will farming heal us? Will touching the earth remind us of who we are? Will getting dirty humble us enough to see past our pathetic selves?

We have so much to do. So much to save. So much to heal. So many to save. Maybe starting little gardens won't save us but its a start, its a part of what will.

The important thing is that we move forward in the right direction with good hearts and good intentions. Everything else is just details.

Swine Flu, bird flu? human flu, H1N1, ?

2009-05-01T21:25:00.011-04:00

First they called it swine flu but it turns out this new flu does not come from pigs. Or does it? A recent report I read on the Associated Press claims it is a mixture of pig, human, and bird flus.

So now birds, pigs, and humans are co-habitating and exchanging blood somewhere? Really?

So is this a bird flu, a swine flu, a human flu? Or all of the above?

The CDC and the president have stopped calling it by its popular name, swine flu and are now calling it by its official name, H1N1. Not catchy, people! We can't call it that! We need something we can remember. Hmmm,....pighumanbird flu? No.....

How about mutant flu? Lets call it the mutant flu.

And can we stop blaming Mexico? Scientists thought it was from Mexico but now they aren't sure. Besides, Mexico deserves praise for doing a very good job of containing the virus. They are forcing all their emigrants to take their temperature before getting on a plane just to protect the rest of the world. Do you think American travelers would put up with that?

So on May Day of all days, we do not need to give the bigoted anti- immigrant white racists out there any more reasons to hate on Mexicans. Mutant flu is not an export of Mexico.

My advice: wash your hands, cover your mouths, and keep your sick butts at home so nobody else gets the mutant flu. In other words, act like you got sense, people. Its not that hard.

Have You Started Your Recession Garden Yet?

2009-04-29T21:27:00.007-04:00

Given the current state of the economy it might be a good idea for people to start growing their own food and becoming more self-sufficient. There is a movement currently afoot of forward-thinking Americans who are planting vegetable gardens in their yards in order to buffer the impact of the failing economy. Of course many people have been growing their own veggies for years but the rest of us needed a crisis to motivate us to become city farmers. We can't all be visionaries....But we CAN all jump on a good bandwagon when we see it.

During the world wars in the early part of the 20th century the Roosevelts urged Americans to plant "Victory Gardens" to help deal with food shortages brought on by the wars and the depression. The Obamas have carved an L shaped vegetable garden out of the White House lawn to grow their own quite extensive vegetable garden. Some people are calling these new gardens "Recession Gardens." I don't like that name. It sounds so negative. We need a positive term like Victory, but as a lifelong anti-war activist I could never cheer for victory in anybody's war.....alas.

So what do we call these gardens? Hope gardens? Change gardens? My Teaching Assistant (Harlan Wallner) thinks we should call them "Transition Gardens." A little more positive but...transition to what? Transistions aren't always good. Remember your transition through puberty? No cake walk.

Unity gardens? How about something related to all these green moves? Green garden is redundant. So is eco-friendly. That would be like calling a tree green or a class educational. Hmmm....Progress gardens? Prophecy gardens (in ref to all the prophecies that foretell earth changes and the need for us to radically change our way of life in preparation) Preparation gardens? Readiness gardens?

Or do we need something that is just soft and cuddly and happy regardless of its relevance to any specific looming threat the garden may be designed to prevent, or mitigate?

Rainbow gardens? Bliss gardens? Horizon gardens? Autonomy gardens? Rebound gardens? Oops there I go referring to the cataclysm again....

Somebody needs to come up with a good name. In the meantime, let me talk about my wee effort at growing something. Mine is a container garden. You don't need a yard or a bunch of farming tools or the strength and energy of a young healthy person to start a garden. I am proof of that. I started mine in window boxes filled with peat soil. I got Organic soil and a bunch a young plants that I transplanted. If I had less money and more ego I might have started with seeds. Fortunately I have no illusions about my natural farming ability.

Despite having lived on a farm as a child and growing up in families that always grew something that we ate, and despite having far too many green-thumbed relatives, I know that I have no natural gift in this area. That said, I still decided to take a stab at minimal self-sufficiency. While I don't share the pessimism of some gardeners- I don't expect the economy or the earth to self-destruct in the near future-I do think it doesn't hurt to become a little less dependent upon corporate agribusiness for all my sustenance.

And besides I like contributing to the oxygen levels, prefer organic food but can't always afford it, am dissatisfied with the quality of produce available in Florida, and most importantly, I have a bunny and she has a big appetite. This garden is for her as much as for me.

My little garden currently contains tomatoes, squash, green beans, cucumber, and many herbs (rosemary, basil, oregano, cayenne, and cilantro.) I also have seeds for lettuces, carrots, parsley, pumpkin and turnip greens for when I am feeling more confident and ambitious. We will see how the plants fare first. My goal right now- keep them alive.

I don't have a very good track record with house plants but as long as nobody tells the porch plants about this I think I will be OK. I keep telling them they are happy and well-nourished and will be growing big. Its only day 2 but so far I feel certain that they find my pep talks persuasive and compelling.

So walk, get on your bicycles, or into your eco-friendly cars, people, and head to the nearest nursery, home depot or lowes-type store and buy your seeds or young plants, your spade, your containers and your waterpot and get to farmin'! Its easy to do, does not take much time (I am a nocturnal farmer), lowers blood pressure and leads to feelings of great peacefulness (You see, I CAN be compelling, right?)

And hey, the muscles you acquire digging holes, pulling weeds, and hauling water and the vibrant health you acquire from eating fresh home-grown produce will no doubt make you very sexy to the mates you desire!

Rape: A State of Emergency

2009-03-27T15:06:00.009-04:00

Last night, the feminist students at the University of Central Florida held a "Take Back the Night" march to speak out against violence against women.

I wrote the following poem for the event and dedicated it to "LaJuana", the woman raped, shot, and dumped on our lawn in North Chicago, but who survived nonetheless, when I was 11.

Rape: A State of Emergency

One out of four college women
Every two a half minutes
60% of rapes never reported
The facts are tragic
But the stories make me madder
Are much sadder
Half of all the women in my family
Most of the friends and lovers I’ve ever had.

Rape is an epidemic
Its time to recognize this
Women live in fear
In a country we call free
Were here to put an end to this
To take back our bodies, to take back our lives.

Its time to walk the streets
Without being preoccupied with
This ever-present threat

*********************

I asked my mother, long ago
What is the one poem I should write
Write about rape she said
It happens everywhere to everyone

It happened to my mother when she was only 18
At knifepoint producing a child
She did not have the legal choice
To have or not have

It happened to my best friend on a couch
In the middle of the day

It happened to my neighbor at 7,
My girlfriend Sarah at 11
My godsister Anna at 8
My classsmate Kara Lin at 10,
All at the hands of uncles and fathers
Brothers and family friends

It happened to my little sister’s best friend
At a party in the coat room where she passed out
And awoke to the clammy groping of her coworker’s hands

It happened to kamala in an all-girl dorm
at an all girls school
Where her muslim parents thought she would be safe.

It could have happened to you

Were you wearing tight jeans, a short skirt, a low cut blouse?
No wonder you got raped

Did you let your boyfriend walk you back to your dorm room?
No wonder you got raped.

Only men can stop rape.

Did you make out with him and then say he had to go home?
Have you ever gone out on a date with a man you didn’t know?
No wonder you got raped.

Only rapists can stop raping.

Were you left home alone with your brother,
your stepfather? A male babysitter?
No wonder you got raped

Did you talk back to a white cop?
Were you kissing a girl in public?
Did you go to the bar unescorted?

No wonder you got raped.

Only rapists are to blame.

Did you stay late in the library studying for your test?
Did you take a late shift at work?
Did you go to a party and get stupid drunk?
No wonder you got raped.

We have to stop telling these lies to girls.

Did you get lost and end up on the wrong side of town?
Were you trying to live within your means and ride the bus?
Did you travel to a strange new city and walk around?
Were you the only woman in an elevator full of men?
Are you the only girl in an all boy band?

No wonder you got raped

Do you enjoy sex.
Do you like to make out with boys or men?
Did you assume you had the right to say when?

Did you forget you were a woman
And imagine you were free?

Were you thinking about your job, your kids, your hopes, your dreams?
Were you preoccupied with your life and its deeper meaning?
Did you forget about rape for a minute. Just one minute?
Were you trying just to live your life for a minute?
Just one minute?
No wonder you got raped.

This is a state of emergency
Women are crying, cutting themselves, dying
Blaming themselves, struggling to survive

When are we going to declare this a state of emergency?
We have declared wars for so much less

**************************

Kayla tells me
“It was stupid dark night in the June of 99”
the city Houston
the weapon his large heavy body, a gun
She was new to America
“And this is how you greet me?”

Esme tells me it was the middle of the night
In August of 2004
On a base in the desert
The city Baghdad, Iraq
The weapon: Her superior officer
Twice her size
He thought he was in charge

Sunny tells me it was a firefly night in her twelfth year
During that magical part of summer
When the kids get to stay out late
Right before The 7th grade
The city: Anytown, USA
The weapon: her brother
Two years older and besides who would believe?

Tell me how is it the stories never end
Tell me how is it I have so many family members and friends
Tell me why have all the women I love been raped
What kind of country do we live in what kind of world
Every two minutes; One out of five women
How have such crimes become so commonplace?

This is urgent business, bloody business, tragic business
For forty years* now we women
Have been blowing the clarion call
For forty years now we survivors
Have been sounding the alarm
For forty years now we feminists have been
taking back the night, marching marching out
into the black black night

Telling all our stories testifying, Expressing all our rage
When will our chanting our marching
be enough?
When can we go home in peace, walk home in peace
Stop the screaming stop the shouting
Stop this terrible necessary crusade?

This is a state of emergency
Women are dying, cutting themselves, killing themselves
Struggling to survive
When are we going to declare this a state of emergency?
We have declared wars for so much less.

Women are sinking, drinking, screaming, marching
We are doing out best
Our lives matter
Our bodies matter
Until rape ends we will not rest.

We are declaring a state of emergency
With our angry voices, our sad stories,
Our survival, our marching feet.

Its time to declare this a state of emergency
We have declared wars for so much less.

*The first known "Take Back the Night" march was organized in San Francisco, California on November 4, 1978

What I like About Obama- Updated List (add Yours!)

2009-03-02T13:16:00.010-05:00

1. He kisses men on the cheek (as well as women) when greeting people.

2. He believes in the basic goodness of humanity.

3. His critics accuse him of being over-ambitious

4. He is going to reform heath care

5. He thinks education is a huge priority

6. He is equally comfortable with white and black folks

7. He is polite and gracious at all times

8. He is humble

9. He is young and energetic

10. He is mixed like me!

11. He does not support tax breaks for corporations

12. He can't be bought by Big Oil or the Military Industrial Complex

13. He believes in dialogue, collaboration, and the accommodation of difference

14. He respects his opponents, even the rude ones, even those who don't respect him

15. He has the coolest walk! (posted by Anonymous)

16. He knows the power of reframing and understands the connection between how one sees/tells a story and how we engage in creating/addressing conflict.   (posted by Martine)

17. he is very dedicated to his work but it never gets in the way of quality father/daughter time with Malia and Sasha (posted by The tomboyeffect)

18. he brought back hope and helped America smile (posted by Tomboyeffect)

19. He treats his wife with respect and makes sure everybody knows he loves her.

20. He is keeping his campaign promises...so far.

21. He is going to make the wasteful, inefficient American car companies clean up their act and clean up the environment at the same time.

22. He is telling the truth about how the government really works and is letting the people know the "ins and outs" of law-making and budget writing through his transparency.

23. Recovery.gov, Change.gov, Transition.gov.....

24. He extended unemployment benefits---which will help a lot of out of work people- including my sister and my cousin.

25. A little black girl in South Carolina sent him a letter and he not only read it but invited her to Washington to watch his speech to Congress in the First Lady's Box.

Add your own "what I like"s to the list.

What I Like About Obama

2009-02-24T22:14:00.003-05:00

1. He kisses men on the cheek (as well as women) when greeting people.

2. He believes in the basic goodness of humanity.

3. His critics accuse him of being over-ambitious

4. He is going to reform heath care

5. He thinks education is a huge priority

6. He is equally comfortable with white and black folks

7. He is polite and gracious at all times

8. He is humble

9. He is young and energetic

10. He is mixed like me!

11. He does not support tax breaks for corporations

12. He can't be bought by Big Oil or the Military Industrial Complex

13. He believes in dialogue, collaboration, and the accommodation of difference

14. He respects his opponents, even the rude ones, even those who don't respect him

The Economy, The Stimulus Bill, and Useless Debates

2009-02-12T20:45:00.018-05:00

Over the last week it has occurred to me that I should be blogging about the economic stimulus bill. Its all they talk about in the news. Can there be a bi-partisan solution? Should the Democrats shave off ore dollars? But I haven't been able to bring myself to hold forth on the topic. I guess I just don't think there is truly anything to debate.

And I know that may sound strange coming from me given my love of dialogue but....isn't it too late for a debate about the details?

Hundreds of thousands of people are out of work. The economy is growing worse by the day. And none of the critiques I have heard of the bill are the least bit compelling: Its a bad idea to pump money into state governments? Its a mistake to give money to create jobs that simultaneously improve our schools, build a green economy, or provide family planning, healthcare, or infrastructure to cities?

And we should debate the details of this bill with people who think the only way to stimulate an economy in a recession is through tax cuts? And they are arguing this after the last administration got us into this mess while following the same tax cut economy stimulus plan?

And they want to stall this bill after they helped Bush rush through a Wall Street bailout plan that did not save the economy, helped no homeowners, stopped no job losses, created no jobs, provided no regulation or oversight (specifically requested by those who rejected the bill) and resulted in wasteful spending by prodigal corporate executives (on golden toilets and whatnot) at the taxpayer's expense?

Really? Are they serious?

Forgive me but I just can't quite wrap my head around this. It just doesn't make sense. What is there to debate about exactly?

Shouldn't the people who've made so many bad decisions over the last eight years be a tad bit more humble? Wouldn't it be more dignified for them to just say, "Ok. My bad. I messed up. See what you can do to fix it up"

But if the devastated economy is not evidence enough that we should stop attempting to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, try looking at some figures that tell us which economic policies have the largest impact on the economy. Check out this chart by Mark Zandi in which he shows that tax cuts are much less effective in stimulating the economy than spending. Tax cuts will not save us:

So can we stop debating and start trying to save this currently-in-the-toilet economy already?

I'm just sayin'

Last Night I had a Nightmare: Palestine and Israel

2009-01-28T22:05:00.010-05:00

Last night I had a dream. All of my friends decided to take a trip to the Middle East. Half of us went to Palestine, the other half went to Israel. I don't know how the decision was made about who would go where but I ended up in Palestine. It was a nightmare. I spent the entire week dodging bombs. I did nothing all week but struggle to survive.

When the group got back together and compared notes I had to explain to the friends who stayed in Israel what Palestine was like. They had no clue. I had to loudly and dramatically explain to them that we had no water, no electricity and no peace of mind. Our every waking moment was consumed with wondering when the next bomb would fall, where the next meal would come from, how we would get by.

My friends who stayed in Israel had had no such experiences. They had watched TV, talked on the phone, ate regular meals, accessed the internet and lived a relatively uneventful life. It was like night and day. I realized after talking to them that it was as if we had lived on different planets for a week (Is it like that for Israelis? Do they just have no idea what it is like to live in Palestine?)

After our one-week experiment we all returned to America but my friends noticed I was having a much harder time re-adjusting to my home life because I could not help worrying about the Palestinians.

This really was a dream. I didn't make it up. But I did get to wake up. After waking up, I find I am still worried about the Palestinians. As an Indigenous person, I am sympathetic to the plight of any colonized people.

When will the colonization of Palestine end? When will they wake up from their nightmare ?

Obama's To Do List: Remember the Women

2009-01-23T17:17:00.021-05:00

OBAMA's TO DO LIST

1. Stop US involvement in torturing detainees---check

2. Wage Peace in the Middle East--begun

3. End International "global gag rule" on abortion--check

4. End the war in Iraq--begun

5. Get us out of this Economic Mess--begun

6. Tear Down the Bush Curtain of Secrecy Hung around the government for last 8 years--check

Obama has initiated talks with Middle Eastern leaders, sent envoys to the Middle East, met with military leaders to set the time table for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, has issued executive orders suspending trials at Gitmo, shut Gitmo down, and set regulations on the interrogation of prisoners still held there. He has also passed executive orders to create government transparency, posted complete copies of all of his executive orders online, written an executive order to reverse the global gag rule on abortion, and met with Congressional leaders to push through an economic stimulus plan designed to create 4 million jobs. All this in the first five days on the job.

So far so good.

But there is still much to do. One of my big concerns at this point is how well Women's Issues will be addressed by this administration.

Concern: Obama's decision to create new jobs primarily through construction and engineering projects is likely to unfairly benefit men over women, given that only 3% of construction workers are women.

Concern: Not only are the jobs being created in fields that are typically disproportionately filled by men but they also usually pay much more than jobs populated by women workers.

Concern: Of the 4 million jobs promised by the economic stiumlus package how many will go to women? An estimated 1.4 million, according to Obama. That is only 35%. Why is 52% of the population only receiving 35% of the jobs being created? This is not acceptable.

Concern: Only 6 of Obama's 24 cabinet members are women, a mere 25%. Only 16 percent of Senators are women and women only account for 17 percent of the House. We as women do not as yet have the political power to represent ourselves. This needs to change. In the mean time we need the men in office- men like Obama- to do everything they can do end gender inequity.

So what should Obama do?

Obama's To DO List for Gender Equity

1. Make sure that 52% of all economic stmulus jobs go to 52% of the population (women) by writing this into the legislation

2. When creating jobs in male-dominated industries (such as construction, engineering, etc), institute regulations to prevent men from favoring men in hiring. Many of the jobs that are reserved for men do not require any skills unique to men.

3. Write pay equity regulations into the economic stimulus plan to guarantee that women receive their fair share of tax-funded resources. Ensure that the female-dominated jobs get paid wages similar to the male-dominated jobs so that men are not making twice what women are making just because we have a history of paying more for jobs associated with men (garbage collection, construction, plumbing, electricians, etc) than for those associated with women(education, clerical, healthcare, childcare).

4. Provide childcare for workers thus allowing more women to work outside the home while simultaneously creating more jobs in a woman-dominated industry (childcare).

Only by undoing the political and economic inequalities that have been in place since this country was founded can we hope to stimulate the economy in a way that does not unfairly privilege 48% of the population (men) to the detriment of the majority (women).

I have a much larger TODO list for Obama but he can start here.

Don't Pinch Me: If I am Dreaming I Don't want to Wake Up!

2009-01-21T21:24:00.006-05:00

This morning I woke up afraid the inauguration had all just been a wonderful dream. It wasn't until I heard the DJ on my morning radio show mention the inauguration that I breathed a sigh of relief. But I can't relax. I still hold my breath every time I see Obama in public, afraid he will be shot. I still worry that someone will find a way to take it all away, to render his election illegitimate somehow. I am still not sure this is really happening.

Its not my fault. Nothing in my 40 years of life on this planet has prepared me for this. Nothing in my experience as a black/red/brown woman in the United States has ever suggested that this was possible. If I don't know how to act for awhile, people are going to have to cut me some slack.

Am I sporting a goofy grin during what ought to be a serious discussion? Cut me some slack. Am I teary-eyed every time I watch the news? Cut me some slack. Am I bumping into walls while walking about in a dreamy state? Cut me some slack, people.

When I was a wee girl all my teachers told me I was supersmart. My parents tended to agree with them. Given all the praise I was getting from the big people- who ought to know-I had no reason to think it unreasonable for me to decide that I was going to grow up to be president of the United States. The adults were too nice to burst my bubble. They never discouraged me but oddly didn't encourage me much either. Looking back on it now, I suspect that just hearing me say that was what I wanted may have broken their hearts a little bit.

When I was older- around 10 or 11 I was reading an encyclopedia (something I enjoyed doing for fun, being a nerdy type of child) and I came across a section on the presidency. The book had a photo gallery with photographs (or in some cases drawings) of all the presidents who served in the history of the country. I looked through all the pictures, page after page, and I was struck by two oddities: there were no women and there were no brown faces.

By that age I had been made aware of the great number of white people who thought Black people weren't real people like them and I had met my share of men who believed that we lived in "a man's world" where women were just their helpmates, their ornaments, their entertainment. But I didn't put it all together until I saw all those old white men lined up in that book. I didn't know until then that when they said any American citizen over the age of 35 could be president that the term "American citizen" did not include me, despite my being Indigenous to this country on one side of my family and a 3rd generation American on the other.

So if I you find me stumbling through my day in a dreamy state, don't pinch me. I don't want to wake up from this wonderful dream! I hope I never do.

Smiling ad Crying for Obama

2009-01-19T11:30:00.008-05:00

I am sitting in front of the television watching the Kenyan Boy's Choir dancing for Obama and I can't help crying. I have been to Africa, I have known Kenyans. I have danced with Tanzanians, Nigerians, Kenyans, and Zanzabaris in the streets on the continent. But I had to travel so long and so far to meet my sisters and brothers.

We as African Americans have never danced with our cousins in the streets of the United States. And when we as African Americans have danced in our own streets, we have always had to keep one eye open for the brutality of our state's police forces who were ready to stop our dancing with guns. We have never seen our African cousins on the dais at distinguished national events. And before Obama, we have never seen our faces so well represented in so many places. We have never had this chance to be this proud.

This is our moment. It is also our country's moment. It is our moment of healing: this inauguration. This is America's chance to begin to undo a history of shame and injustice. It is our chance finally to undo the damage done by our ancestors, to heal the wounds inflicted on our ancestors. It is our chance to remember and to heal a past marked by slavery, lynching, segregation, and discrimination. It is our chance to replace hate with love.

Kenyans are so happy. We African Americans are so happy. But I can't help crying too. We have waited for so long. African Americans have waited so long. Africans have waited for so long. America has waited for too long.

Will we now, finally, have the chance as peoples to dance in our own streets? Will we be treated with dignity and respect now? To believe that another world is possible makes us smile; to remember the lives we have been forced to live for centuries makes us cry.

No matter what Obama does as a president, his election has given us this moment, this moment of hope. For the first time we are able to imagine that another world is possible.

Thank You Kenya, for sending us your son; thank you Kansas for sending us your son. Thank you America for pursuing King's dream. We shall overcome.

Good News: Oscar Grant's Killer in Jail

2009-01-17T02:13:00.005-05:00

The white cop who shot the unarmed black man, Oscar Grant, at an Oakland BART station has finally been arrested and put behind bars after two weeks of protesting in the city of Oakland by outraged residents. The officer was apprehended in Nevada and returned to California where he was booked on murder charges the night before a second big rally by Bay Area activists asking for justice

Numerous cell phone videos have surfaced over the last week. None of them show any reason why the cop should have shot the man in the back while he lay face down on the ground. The other young men who were forced to witness the brutal murder at close range while also being detained by police are said to be suffering from trauma after the event.

Racism Kills - OSCAR GRANT murder (TRAIN VIEW)

2009-01-12T14:19:00.005-05:00

Young black man killed execution style by white police officer.

Oscar Grant, the 22-year old killed, had no guns, posed no threat, was not engaged in any crime and had his hands in the air when they tackled him, as this video clearly shows. He was a black man killed at random by a white cop who perceives black men as inherently dangerous even when handcuffed and restrained by two cops. Oakland residents have been protesting for days demanding that charges be made against the officer who killed the handcuffed father of two.

This is what racism looks like. Racism kills.

New Year's Day: The Day of Killing Children

2009-01-01T15:11:00.016-05:00

Today Israel is still bombing Gaza. Over 400 Palestinians killed, over 2,000 wounded. Many children wounded today.

Sadly Israel and their allies continue to try to portray this as a war. The Israeli's have lost 4 people, they say. Four? Are they serious? Four compared to four hundred? A city that has no water, limited electricity, insufficient medical supplies, and no modern military weapons, no weapons of mass destruction is being compared with the modern city of Israel, a city-state which has one of most well-stocked arsenals in the world?

According to the group, Physicans for Human Rights, "Palestinian doctors are performing surgeries without surgical gloves, local or general anesthetics, gauze, sterilized equipment or sufficient oxygen for patients. All together, there are only 1,500 hospital beds available in Gaza’s 13 publicly run hospitals."

Israel is the only state in the entire region that has nuclear weapons. It is the fourth-largest recipient of weapons from the U.S. Since 1986, it has received a U.S. allotment of $1.8 to 3 billion per year in foreign military funding. No other country in the world, whether member of the United Nations or non-member, has been as frequently condemned by the United Nations as has Israel for its occupations, wars, attacks, and massacres in the Middleeast. It currently stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions.

(Hoffman and Lieberman, Reporter's Notebook)

Meanwhile, no Arab State has ever been condemned by any organ of the United Nations for military attacks upon Israel.

So if you don't believe me, listen to the United Nations. This is not a just war, it is not even properly described as a war. It is a military attack by a super military power on an ethic organization designed to suppress and intimidate. It is an act of terror.

The blood of Palestinan children running through the streets of Gaza testifies to this.

Israel starts Another War: We in the West do Not Support it

2008-12-29T18:53:00.009-05:00

Israel is bombing the Palestinian people in Gaza City for the third straight day amid worldwide protests. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas, a group within Gaza that they have labeled terrorist.

Meanwhile, France, Britain, China, Japan, and Russia have all called for an end to the assault which has taken the lives of over 300 and has wounded 1500, including women and children. This air assault also targeted a university. Universities are not military targets in any understanding of warfare, nor are children. The Director General of the United Nations has called for an end to the violence and protests against the carnage are being held throughout the world

Israel is justifying the murder of hundreds by pointing to the death of one Israeli at the hands of Hamas and President Bush is supporting the Israeli attacks. Israel is mobilizing 6500 troops for a possible ground offensive against Gaza.

But both Israeli and Western citizens are critical of the Israeli offensive. Israeli newspapers are critical of the new war and Europeans and Americans have held protests throughout the West.

According to one Israeli reporter citing a Palestinian on the ground, "This assault is not against Hamas. It's against all of us, the entire nation. And no Palestinian will consent to having his [or her] people and homeland destroyed in this way."

According to another Israeli reporter from Haaretz newspaper, the recent bombing is motivated by a Zionist desire to "teach Palestinians a lesson." The reporter explains, "Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders." The reporter reminds Israeli readers of the error of such an approach given history,"This assumption has proven wrong over and over." It has never worked.

But more importantly such an approach is morally wrong.

Why is our country supporting such a war? We the American people do not support the bombing of civilians even if our leaders do. We did not support the bombing of innocents in Afghanistan, we protested the bombing of civilians in Iraq, we decried the bombing of civilians in Lebanon and we will protest this most recent outrage.

The Heroes We Wish They Were: Obama, Warren, and Homophobia

2008-12-19T00:46:00.014-05:00

I haven't been happy with all of Obama's cabinet picks but this week I was basking in the afterglow of having finally finished his first memoir, Dreams From My Father, and I was full of hope for our new president. He is an impressive writer and speaker, and his book is full of inspirational and reflective prose. He is brilliant, insightful, well-educated, and progressive on many issues. He may be the smartest president we have ever had and he certainly appears to be the most loving and peaceful leader we have had in a very long time. I was so busy patting myself on the back for campaigning for this remarkable man, I never saw Rick Warren coming.

Like many of his supporters, I am still reeling from Obama's decision to have an explicitly anti-gay pastor perform the invocation at his inauguration.

Mr Obama, how did this happen?

I like the idea of a "team of rivals." As a mixed person, I understand his desire to bring people together across difference. As a scholar, artist, and activist who has devoted my life and my career to teaching people to respect one another and to see shared humanity where in the past they have only seen difference, I can well appreciate the challenges involved in trying to bring people of dissimilar views into dialogue. But I don't think hate is something we can agree to disagree on.

Rick Warren has spoken out openly against gay marriage. Nothing spectacular about that. Everyone seems to be jumping on the anti-gay marriage bandwagon these days, but Warren actually compared gay marriage to pedophilia and incest. That constitutes more than a mere difference of opinion. It is bigotry.

I think we need to draw a line when it comes to bigoted language. Why would Obama want such a person to represent him? I thought his message was all about hope and love and peace?

If Bush picked such a pastor gay people would not be up in arms about it. But it breaks our hearts when the candidate we thought was running on a platform of social justice decides to align himself with a person who speaks in dehumanizing ways about gay people.

Of course our sense of betrayal is bigger than Obama. It has to do with the expectations we tend to have for the rare political leader who seems to be ahead of his or her times. We think if a leader is enlightened on one issue then she ought to be enlightened on all the important issues. It shocks our sensibilities when we discover that they sympathize with oppressors of any kind. It eats away at our hope and adds to our mounting despair when we must consider the possibility that despite our patience, our struggle, and our suffering, we still cannot count on even the most forward-thinking of our leaders to stand up on our behalf, to cry injustice, to protect us from the hate-mongers as part of their larger campaigns to fight injustice.

We want Obama to be our King, our Kennedy, our Gandhi,.. our hero perhaps. We want him to fight for us, to recognize our rights, to include us finally in the panoply of humanity. Do we want too much?

After all, Gandhi was not the hero we thought he was when it came to women. He fought for the rights of men, not of humans. He treated his male servants better than he treated his wife and other women in his household. He argued in his autobiography that Hindu women were made for serving men, that they had no objections to devoting their lives to the desires and care of men. He did not include women in his arguments for the rights of workers. His work against injustice did not include the injustices suffered by women.

Such revelations disappoint us when we discover them because great people like Gandhi, like King, like Obama perhaps, represent to us the existence, how ever rare, of leaders who can see beyond their times, men or women who are always somehow on the right side of history, who manage to choose always what is right over what is popular or expedient.

When Loving vs. Virginia was decided by the Supreme Court in 1967, 70% of the population of the United States were opposed to the legalization of interracial marriage (20% still do) but legalizing it was the right thing to do. In 1863, when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation the vast majority of the US population was opposed to freeing the slaves but it was the right thing to do. In the 19th century when numerous women were granted the right to own property for the first time, it was done by judges in courts all over the country while the majority of US voters (suffrage was limited to men) were opposed to an expansion of rights for women. It was not popular but it was the right thing to do.

It is just a matter of time before gay Americans are granted all the same rights of citizenship that non-gay Americans currently enjoy. Heterosexuals engage in sex acts and romantic alliances that are currently more popular than queer relationships but that doesn't make them more right.

Homophobia is not right and history will redeem us. But in the mean time, it is disappointing in the extreme that the man we elected to be our president does not yet recognize our rights. It is unfortunate to discover that he fights bigotry in all its other forms but supports bigotry when it is aimed at gays and lesbians.

Gay and Lesbian Americans do not simply have a different view than homophobes. We do not, as Obama, has recommended, need to "agree to disagree" with anti-gay activists like Warren. Gay people and anti-gay people do not have a difference of opinion. They have a difference of power. The oppressed never just disagree with their oppressors. They are victimized by their oppressor's views. And we know that Frederick Douglas was right when he proclaimed so many years ago that, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will." We are demanding an end to heterosexist oppression.

Those who claim to fight for justice cannot draw the line at gay rights, claiming to support the rights of workers, poor people, women, people of color, the disabled, old people, and immigrants, but still refusing to fight for the rights of queers. As King put it, "An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Mr Obama, as MY president, I hope you realize this sooner rather than later.

I Called in Gay Today: Day Without a Gay protests all over US

2008-12-10T14:52:00.002-05:00

I "called in Gay" today.

Unanswered Questions: Terrorists, Bush, War, Workers, Blagojevich, Corruption, ...

2008-12-09T22:21:00.011-05:00

1. Why is outgoing "lame duck" president Bush so busy? And why does he want to be in charge of the automakers' bailout so much?

2. Whose idea was it to send 200,000 security contractors to Iraq and who (besides Cheney) is profiting from this policy?

3. Are any of the suspicious things that Bush did during his eight years in office going to be investigated by the next administration? Will he be found to have committed a crime of any kind?

4. Is Obama just a very clever strategist or do his cabinet picks indicate he is less progressive than progressives thought he was?

5. Why do we still not know for sure what caused the 3 world trade buildings to collapse inwardly on September 11th ? i.e why hasn't the government been able to explain away claims by architects and engineers that the melting point of steel is 1500 degrees Celsius and the maximum heat generated by a jet fuel in air is 1000 degrees C?

6. Why did five Al-Qaeda terror suspects held at Guantanamo decide to plead guilty to the Sept. 11th bombings on November 4th, the day Obama won the election?

7. When is the Patriot Act going to be repealed and our civil liberties restored?

8. Why is my home state of Illinois the corruption capitol of the country? Gansterism is so old school, people!

9. Are there lots of workers (besides those workers striking for "Republic windows and Doors" in Chicago) in the country who have been fired and denied their federal law-guaranteed severance pay?

10. If not paying your workers what you contracted to do and what the law says you must is a violation of federal law, can corporate execs who close their doors and fire all their workers without notice go to jail for that? Will they? Should they?

11. Did the feds who wiretapped Illinois governor Blagojevich do so with a warrant or was this a patriot act-permitted tapping?

12. If 12 of his buddies had already been indicted why didn't Blagojevich think they were coming for him?

13. Will Congress use the Congressional Review Act to reverse all thee last minute regulations being implemented by lame duck Bush (regarding among other things: the reductions of medicare reimbursements, regulations allowing doctors to refuse birth control to their patients, environmental deregulations, and policies designed to reduce the protections for endangered species)?

If you have any answers, please comment below!

Stop the Genocide in Darfur!

2008-12-07T23:49:00.005-05:00

Darfur, Sudan

Rwanda

Bosnia

Kurds in Iraq

Cambodia

Nazi Germany

What do all these places have in common?

1. Genocide occurred in each of them.

2. In each case America had the means and the knowledge to be able to stop it.

3. In each case, we failed to act and let people die, sometimes even collaborating with the perpetrators.

Why aren't we stopping the genocide in Darfur?

When will we learn from our past mistakes?

The Real Deal in Iraq: Blackwater Contractors

2008-12-06T17:10:00.009-05:00

So have you heard the news? 200,000 security contractors employed in Iraq by private corporations? More corporate contractors than US troops? Paid, armed, but not directly answerable to United States military or Iraq?

American taxpayers are paying their salaries and they are making a whole lot more money than our soldiers.

Yes, really.

American contractors like Blackwater and Haliburton (both under investigation for fraudulent and/or criminal behavior) have been making money hand over fist in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Billions.

Corporations involved in this enterprise include the following:

Aegis Defence Services- $292 million dollar contract

Blackwater USA- amount unkown, purported to earn largest profits

Erinys- $150 millions- their security guards make twice what American soldiers make

Halliburton- $12 billion in profits.

Are these contractors mercenaries? Are these companies just war profiteers exploiting the war for their own gain?

The American people need to know.

Obama's Cabinet: Walking the Talk?

2008-12-04T09:01:00.008-05:00

Although I still have my reservations about some of Obama's picks- like that sexist Summers- and Holder, I am now fairly impressed with Obama's commitment to diversity in his choices for his cabinet.

Three women (Napolitano, Rice, Clinton), two African Americans (Rice, Holder), one Hispanic (Richardson). and two white men (Geithner, Gates). He also picked one Republican (I could have done without THAT much diversity but he is walking his talk). We are on the move.

And like Lincoln, he really is picking a team of rivals, including former opponents Clinton, Biden, and Richardson. Also his pick of Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano might be good for immigration reform given the way Republicans have trashed her for being in support of amnesty. Nobody talked about immigration during the election. When are we going to stop calling human beings illegal?

Once he appoints a Native American, a openly gay person, and a left progressive (like Kucinich) I will be happy.... but maybe I want too much?

The Truth About Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T13:58:00.002-05:00

While many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, many Native Americans do not. Most of the Thanksgiving story is constructed from a set of myths which not only don't match the historical record but which also hide some of the more shameful facts about colonial America.

According to Native organization, Oyate, among the myths that are taught to our children are included the following:

1. The claim that the first thanksgiving occurred in 1621 is a myth. In fact, First nations people have always celebrated Harvest Feasts of some kind. Here in the Southeast, the Seminole, Cherokee, Muskogee peoples among others celebrate the Green Corn Festival.

2. The claim that the first colonists who celebrated the "first thanksgiving" were pilgrims and innocent refugees seeking "freedom of religion" is a myth. In fact at the time of their landfall, many Native Americans had already been enslaved and brought back to England and the early colonists had already determined that these people were heathens and not a part of God's Kingdom and therefore candidates for extinction. They did not think Indigenous peoples deserved religious freedoms.

3. The claim that early settler found corn is a myth. The truth is much more sinister. Not only did the colonists steal corn stores from Wampanoag peoples storage areas and houses but they even raided Indigenous graves for corn and jewelry, leaving the bones of their dead scattered in their looting.

4. The claim that Squanto chose willingly to become a special friend and guide to the colonists is a myth. He was one of the only surviving members of the Wampanoag village of Pawtuxet that had been wiped out by earlier English incursions in the area. He had been held captive for years and taught English.

5. The claim that the colonists invited the Indians to the feast and fed them and that they became great friends is a myth. In truth, the feast was "crashed" by the Wapanoag who heard gunshot and were suspicious of the the colonists, came to check it out and then saw the meager feast of the English and decided to contribute to it. The Wapanoag would have brought the lion share of the food as they were much better equipped to feed themselves than the colonists. Rather than leading to peace, these early meetings led to massacres on the part of the English. In 1637, the Pequot suffered the loss of 700 of their members in a massacre against unarmed men, women, and children, when colonists attacked them in their sleep and burned them alive.

For many First Nations peoples, "Thanksgiving is a time of mourning, a reminder of genocide and the theft of Indian lands.

When will America tell the true story of her origins? When will she admit wrongdoing, make amends, learn from her mistakes, and institute reparations for all she has done in the name of racism and greed?

We are waiting....

Lets Stop Recognizing Straight Marriage

2008-11-21T19:41:00.007-05:00

After prop 2 passed in Florida and then prop 8 in California passed I toyed with the idea of no longer recognizing the marriages of my straight friends. I was sick of the double standard and wondered how to take a stand. I tried referring to my friend's wife as his girlfriend but he didn't get it. He thought I was joking.

When people- usually presumptuous straight males- ask me if I am married, I tell them my country does not guarantee my right to marry despite my being a citizen. This usually leads to some confused responses, with the most popular reply being, "what country are you from?"

Same country as you, bozo! We do what we can......alas. These verbal protests may seem trivial but I think they make a difference. Silencing has always been an important part of homophobia so every time we speak back and speak out we come closer to defeating it.

In a recent Huffington blog I read, Evan Derkacz, wrote about his decision to no longer recognize any marriages until Gay marriage is recognized. Reading his blog gave me renewed resolve to continue to do the same. But I think we should ALL do it!

Are you ready, people? Remove the words: wife, husband, spouse, and fiance out of your vocabulary. They don't exist. Replace them with girlfriend, boyfriend, lover, companion. You could even try out "roommate" for kicks...for all the couples involuntarily closeted by their parents.

If we could get millions to do this, then the same straight people would hear it over and over again. If they got to feel what it was like to have the legitimacy of their union questioned over and over, it might sink in!

We can only hope!

Lets all try it and see what happens. Spread the word!

Come back to this blog and comment on what happens.

Obama's Cabinet: Should we be Worried?

2008-11-19T20:48:00.015-05:00

As the days go by, news keeps coming out about Obama's latest cabinet picks. And it is a bit surprising, disappointing some say. Among the concerns being voiced; why so many former Clinton admin vets? Why so many insiders? Why Hillary Clinton? Is this change?

I, for one, was shocked he was considering the avowed sexist Lawrence Summers for Treasury Secretary. If he picked him that would have been a big slap in the face to all the feminists who voted for him.

Now it appears his pick for Attorney General (Eric Holder) may be a cause for concern. Did he really support the Patriot Act? All for domestic spying? Is that change?

Among the troubling items on his resume are included: the fact that he served as Deputy Atty. General for the Clinton Admin, the fact that his law firm is currently representing the banana company, Chiquita in Columbia, and most disturbingly, he was part of the legal team in 2005 that secured re-authorization of the Patriot Act. This according to

award-winning reporter, Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now."

On the up side, he will be the first African American appointed to the post. But is he the only African American available?

Weren't we all hoping Obama would rid America of the legacy of the current administration by getting rid of some of its most shameful blows to American dignity- including Bush and Ashcroft's programs to torture foreign prisoners and to spy on American citizens?

Human Rights activists are decrying Holder's connection to Chiquita International, the parent company of Chiquita Banana which was accused of spending 1.7 billion in funding to Colu

mbian death squads that murdered labor activists. Reports indicate the US Justice Dept. went after Chiquita for their role in these murders and they hired Holder to defend them.

The change we need? I don't think so. Why is Obama appointing a man like this to his cabinet? Should we be worried about who else he will appoint? I for one would like to know what his rationale is in appointing such a man?

I believe in Obama and want to believe these choices make sense. Do they? Can someone explain them to me?

Wanda Sykes Comes Out

2008-11-17T00:07:00.001-05:00

We must all come out in support of gay rights!

Are We Post-racial or irredeemiably Racist: Why Did Marcello Lucero die?

2008-11-13T22:40:00.001-05:00

It is Wednesday night and I have just spent the day with some wonderful students at Keene State College in New Hampshire. The small college town is quaint and homey, full of victorian architecture and local-run businesses. The chilly 40 degree weather is dry and crisp and refreshing after months of Florida's heat.

I gave a talk/performance in philopoetics today at the University to an audience of college students, faculty and administrators on American identity in this "post-election of a black man" moment in history. I wanted to start a dialogue on racism in America by asking whether or not we think we are moving beyond racism or just becoming more conscious of our racism

So many news reporters have hailed the election of Barack Obama as a indication that "the times they are a changin'" arguing we have overcome racial discrimination. Meanwhile we have seen an explosion in overt racist behaviors and acts. The amount of hate speech generated at McCain/Palin rallies alone was shameful and frightening. And yet many people are full of hope about our racial future. The mobilization of people campaigning for Obama was truly diverse, transcending traditional race lines, generational divisions, and even political parties in some cases.

The rhetoric of many includes the hope that we are becoming a post-racial society- that true equality for all Americans may actually be around the corner- that the fact that we elected a Black (or biracial) man signals the fall of racism and the end of discrimination.

But at the same time there has been a rise in racist hate speech and now racist violence.

In Long Island, Equadorean Marcello Lucero was beaten to death by 7 white teenage boys for being Hispanic. They went our looking for A Mexican to beat. They found an Equadorean but that was close enough for them- they beat and stabbed him to death.

A few months ago in Texas, a 16 year old Hispanic boy was beaten and sodomized by two white teenage boys who claimed the hispanic boy was trying to kiss a white girl. In that community racist Klan literature has been circulating for months in response to Obama's bid for the presidency.

Race-based hate crimes went down between 2007 and 20o8 according to the FBI which would tend to support those who contend racism is on the way out. Unfortunately hate crimes against gays and lesbians have gone up. Maybe we are entering a post-racial but iredemmiably homophobic society?

Was Marcello's death an abberation or a sign of regression in race relations? One of the attorneys for one of the murderers claims his client is not racist because he has friends at school who are minorities. Unfortunately stories are now coming out that the gang of attackers may have been involved in other incidents in which they harrassed and intimidated others. They're not racist though.

Racism has a tendency to morph. Before the Civil rights movement many white people were unapologetically racist I know because I have people in my family who were like this (some still are). My white grandfather for example had a derogatory term for every racial group and used them liberally. He frequently and openly complained about all of the negative attributes of nonwhite people. He did not try to hide his racism.

Nowadays that behavior is frowned upon. Racists have gone underground. They are careful about what they say in mixed company. They publicly claim to be non-racist. They are down-low racists. Most of their friends are white and are racist but they don't think they are racist or they don't think anything is wrong with having the views they have as long as they don't air them publicly.

So there are people like my good friend's husband who is very racist (he has argued for example that all Muslims should be exterminated because they are all terrorists) but had recently argued that he is not a racist because he has on occasion allowed Black people to eat at his house. He knows he is not supposed to admit to being a racist but nobody listening to him for any length of time would consider him anything but a racist.

Since November 4th, I have experienced some kind of racist even almost every day. I live in Florida- its the south- but I reside in a democratic county. But after four years living here there appears to be a spike in racism. People are becoming outspoken and rude.

I would like to believe that Obama's administration will improve race relations in the United States but I cannot agree with newscasters who want to believe that racism is over just because we elected a Black man as our president.

A More Perfect Union: Nation-Wide Protests for Gay Rights

2008-11-10T10:56:00.013-05:00

Although there is not much being reported on the issue, and reports have undercounted the size of the crowds, thousands of protesters throughout the country are coming together in outrage over the passage of several anti-gay amendments and propositions last Tuesday.

The most famous and most damaging proposition (Prop 8) was passed in California, a state where the courts had previously ruled that their constitution did not discriminate on the basis of gender or sexuality and thus that all Californians had the same right to marry the person they chose. Prop 8 would undo the previous gains.

Other propositions, such as Prop 2 in Florida were preemptive strikes against gay rights which outlawed gay marriage before courts had a chance to hear cases of this nature.

People have been taking to the streets -in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and all points in between- EVERY DAY SINCE THE ELECTION in the thousands. Now people are protesting all over the country:

Cambridge, MA;

Phoenix, AZ;

New Orleans, LA:

Jacksonville, FL;

New York, NY,

Boston, MA;

Cleveland, OH;

Lubbuck, TX;

Atlanta GA;

Fairbanks, Alaska;

Detroit, MI;

Billings, MT;

DesMoines, IA

Jackson, MS

Orlando, FL;

Albuquerque, NM;

Omaha, NE;

Grand Forks, ND

Denver, CO, and many more....

To find a protest near you, visit Join the Impact website:

( http://www.jointheimpact.com/?page_id=2) or

the blog by Queers United: (http://queersunited.blogspot.com)

Smiling and Crying, Part II: The Hope of Obama, the Shame of Homophobia

2008-11-08T21:24:00.009-05:00

We had not even recovered from celebrating Obama's victory on Tuesday when the bad news came early Wednesday that indeed all of the homophobic propositions in the country had passed. How did this happen?

Is homophobia the last frontier for civil rights activists? Florida, Arkansas, Arizona, and even California? all passed anti-gay propositions and ammendments in Tuesday's election. What is wrong with straight people? Wouldn't their time be better spent trying to figure out why they are such abysmal failures at making marriage work for their own community rather than trying to keep people in other communities from getting married?

It is a shameful day for us all. We finally have a president we can be proud of but we continue to have a government that legalizes discrimination against minorities.

The people of California have taken to the streets every day since the election. I cannot praise them enough for their dedication and their perseverance. I wish we Floridians were as dedicated. But we are fighting much more of an uphill battle here in the South.

Until Gay people have the basic right to love whom they love and to form legally recognized bonds of marriage when they chose, we cannot claim to hold as self-evident the truth that "we are all created equal" nor can we claim that our country protects "our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Obama campaigned as a supporter of gay rights but not of gay marriage. I understand why he thought he had to do that, politically, given the 2004 election...but I hope that when he is in office he will get behind the gay marriage movement. It would be so inconsistent with his overall message of unity and equality not to!

Smiling and Crying: Obama Elected President

2008-11-07T19:16:00.000-05:00

All day Tuesday I couldn't stop smiling. As I shuffled between phone-banking, sign-waving, and tallying canvasser doors knocked, I could not suppress my overflowing joy. I knew Obama was gonna win. I could feel victory in the air. As I sauntered round the campaign office, ever in search of a new more interesting task (security gave me more than one look of concern), I could not help smiling. When cranky old people got mad at me for calling them to ask them if they had voted yet and proceeded to complain in very loud tones about how many !*&%#!!! Obama people had called them this week I just smiled and apologized for bothering them. Secretly I thought to myself, "WOW, we sure are working hard to be calling everybody three times a day to remind them to vote!"

Then I would share the juiciest dialogues with my campaign mates- two middle-aged Puerto Rican sisters (phone-banking in both English and Spanish) and a young African American fellow (phone-banking in both English and French-Creole) and we would all laugh. Nothing and no one could get us down.

Similarly, when I was out sign-waving on a downtown street corner next to grim-faced McCain/Palin supporters, no amount of offensive chants or shouts by passing cars could sink my mood. One nasty McCain supporter even mooned us with his big hairy butt. Gross. Who wants a constituency like that?

At one point a McCain supporter who had smiled at us and pretended to be civil quickly lost his polite veneer with a racist comment in response to one of our chants. When a young ( and quite happy!) Puerto Rican man in the Obama camp began chanting, "We're going to the white house!" the white racist McCain supporter replied, "to clean the windows."

It was shocking but it didn't deter us. We got louder, changed our chant, shouted over them and kept on smiling.

All day I just kept breaking out in loony grins. When at the end of the night, CNN finally called the election for Obama I was incredulous. Really? Really? Is it true? Is this really happening? I flipped all the channels. MSNBC, CBS, even Fox called it for Obama. Then I knew. Hope. Real Hope. And after I stopped smiling I cried.

Tears of joy. I watched Jesse Jackson cry and I cried some more. I saw Oprah cry and cried some more. I called my sisters and cried some more. I saw thousands of strangers of every age and race crying and smiling in Chicago, Atlanta, Times Square. I smiled for the next hour right through McCain's surprisingly articulate and honorable concession speech.

Then Obama gave his acceptance speech and I found myself crying again.

For Martin. For Malcolm. For Medgar.

For Goodman and Cheney and Schwerner.

For John and for Bobby.

For all of who have suffered for so long..... A Change Gon' Come!

Yes We Can!: A World of Hope Unites Behind Obama

2008-11-05T00:17:00.005-05:00

I am so full of joy and hope now that I feel I could put my own small torch down now and go in peace knowing that Obama will carry a larger one for the world. We have a true leader. Finally. A man of peace, a person who truly loves his fellow human being, who transcends differences to bring people together, who unifies and inspires so many.

But of course Obama won't let us put our little torches down. He wants us to work with him, to help him change this world for the better and we are so eager, so willing to help him. So many of us have spent our entire lives trying to change the world, trying to make it a better place. We are so pleased finally to have a leader who will encourage us in this endeavor, who will lead the way in this endeavor, who will join us in making change.

Long live Obama!

The world is new again!

We are a country filled with hope

Why You Must Vote: What is at Stake in this Election

2008-11-03T20:55:00.001-05:00

As we approach the last 24 hours of voting, I urge everyone to be patient, put up with long lines, and miss work and school if you have to, in order to vote. This election is too important to miss. So much is at stake.

I have complied a preliminary list of 11 things that are at risk in this election.

What Is At Stake:

1. American Soldiers. Literally.

Obama plans to end the Iraq war as soon as possible. McCain has pledged to continue th

e war indefinitely, in pursuit of an elusive and undefined "victory." America has been down this road before. Remember Vietnam? Many soldiers died. We won nothing. The outcome of this election will determine how many more American soldiers sacrifice their lives unnecessarily. Since McCain has consistently voted against social programs for veterans, the high rates of suicide found among returning veterans as a result of insufficient mental health assistance, will continue and more veterans will also die under McCain.

2. Grandma and Grandpa/Mom and Pop:

McCain plans to privatize social security and to reduce medicare and medicaid. This m

eans voting for McCain may seriously impact the lives of seniors, most of whom rely on these programs. Obama is opposed to privatizing social security and has promised to secure

social security for seniors.

3. The Economy (aka your savings):

McCain plans to keep spending 10 million/month on Iraq despite the huge Bush deficit. He is opposed to social spending to help those suffering in this economic crisis. He wants to offer billions of dollars we don't have in tax cuts

to corporations and oil companies. The economy is already in the dumpster. We can't afford to spend this kind of money any more. Bush and the Republican congress have spent the most money, built the biggest government,and created the largest deficit in the history of this country. In order to dig this economy out of the gutter, we need to stop spending our taxpayer dollars on war, subsidies to oil companies, and corporations. Obama will end the war and the huge defense expenditure. He will also stop giving tax breaks to oil companies and give them to us instead. He will not start new wars without exhausting diplomatic channels first.

4. The Very Sick

McCain's health plan will not provide enough funding for people who are actually sick and uninsured. Nobody with a serious disease, with heart disease, liver disease, cancer, etc has medical bills under $5,000/year nor can insurance be bought to cover these conditions for only $5,000. If you are healthy, then McCain's plan might work out for you. Obama's plan will provide insurance coverage for everybody, including the very sick, including those with pre-existing conditions.

5. Our Standing in the World

Since Bush has been in office our standing in the world has seriously declined. His Bush Doctrine- starting wars with people you imagine might one day be a threat has cost us the respect of most of our allies and most of the world. McCain supports the Bush Doctrine. Obama supports diplomacy as a first resort and war as a last resort. McCain wants to fight wars and label people as terrorists. His whole persona is about "fighting," as is evidenced in his campaign speeches. Nobody likes a bully. As a country we can't keep acting like a bully in the world. Our reputation cannot

tolerate more of this behavior.

6. First Nations/American Indians

Obama is committed to tribal nation building and h

onoring federal treaty obligations to First Nations peoples. He has voted for increasing funding to the chronically under-funded Indian health Services, and supports the rights of tribes to ensure the economic sustainability of their nations through fishing, hunting, energy and gaming enterprises. McCain, despite serving on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, has voted against or failed to support various health, housing, and educational programs for Native Americans and has, according to tribal leaders in New Mexico, made openly anti-tribal sovereignty comments. Palin's record in Alaska is profoundly anti-Native. Meanwhile, more than 100 tribal leaders (including the largest nation, the Navajo) have endorsed Barack Obama.

7. Your Paycheck

As long as corporations are rewarded for sending jobs overseas, and as long as unions are under siege, workers in the United States will continue to see a decline in wages, loss of

jobs and decreased benefits. Obama is endorsed by all of the unions (including the plumbers union- that's right, the real Joe the plumber is voting for Obama) and is committed to improving worker conditions. Obama is also committed to ending the wage gap that unfairly causes women to be paid less money than men for doing the same job. McCain has voted against ending the wage gap. Since Obama's tax cut will also decrease your taxes if you make under $250,000, your net take home pay will be larger under him.

7. Women's Lives. Literally.

Every year 1400 women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends. Obama co-sponsored the Violence Against Women A

ct, designed to make it more difficult for men to assault and kill women and easier for women who have been battered to get assistance. He was also the chief sponsor of the victim's Economic Security and Safety Act which protects victims of domestic or sexual violence in their request for leave from work to seek medical and legal assistance. He was also the chief c0-sponsor of laws passed to increase penalties for repeat domestic offenders and to to increase penalties for those committing battery near a domestic violence shelter. He was also a co-sponsor of the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Database Act of 2005, a bill to protect children from known sex offenders, a law expanding the rights of victims of sexual assault, and a law to make date rape drugging a crime of aggravated battery.

McCain voted against the Violence Against Women Act, voted against legislation requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims, and has sponsored no bills to protect women's lives.

Women are also dying in large numbers from undiagnosed heart disease. According to the America Heart Association, women are almost twice as likely as men to die after their first heart attack and yet are often undiagnosed as a result of the fact that 80% of all medical research is done exclusively on men. Obama has supported legislation providing funding for the Center of Excellence in Women's Health and is committed to encouraging research into gender and health disparities. McCain has voted consistently against women's health. He has voted 125 times against bills for women's health.

9. Your Taxes

Unless you are rich or a corporation, you will get little or no tax break. McCain's tax plan will give $4 billion in tax breaks to corporations and oil companies (This number has been CNN fact-checked)

10. The Supreme Court/ Your Privacy Rights

Three of the four liberal judges currently seated on the supreme court, are either very old or talking retirement. If McCain gets into office, he will likely replace these with conservati

ve judges making the Court entirely conservative. If elected, Obama will not be able to tilt the Court in a new direction. McCain has promised to overturn Roe V. Wade if given the opportunity. If he is elected, women will lose the right to choose and this will result in numerous deaths of women, as was common before Roe V. Wade. McCain's court may also render decisions taking away other privacy rights of Americans and given McCain and Palin's commitment to mixing religion with government will likely begin to infuse their evangelical Christian views into our government.

11. The Planet Earth/ Animals

Obama has pledged to stop drilling, stop subsidizing oil comp

anies, stop importing so much foreign oil and begin to develop alternative energy sources like wind and solar power. He is committed to reducing the greenhouse effect and increasing emissions control. He has plans to provide federal subsidies to auto companies who develop fuel-efficient cars. McCain wants to "drill, baby drill" regardless of the negative impact oil drilling has on our environment. He has voted fro drilling in wildlife refuges where animals in d

anger of extinction live. He wants to develop more nuclear power and does not think the risks of nuclear contamination of our planet are worrisome (despite Chernobyl or Three-mile island). He thinks we should begin offshore drilling despite reports of the harm this will case sea life, subsidize oil companies, and and fight wars with any country that challenges our access to middle-eastern oil.

McCain received a "zero" on his League of Conservation Voters 2007 scorecard of senators and congressmen, where 100 indicates voting with the environment every time and zero indicating a vote against the environment every time. He has a well-documented voting record in which he has consistently supported Big Oil and has voted against renewable electricity, energy efficiency standards, and green tax incentives. Despite his claim to fighting against global warming, he has refused to support global warming solutions that do not include a big role for the development of nuclear power, regardless of its risks.

Veterans do Not Support McCain Because He Does Not Support Them

2008-11-01T12:03:00.007-04:00

Time and again John McCain has voted against veterans. He has voted against healthcare for veterans, education for veterans, social services for veterans. He voted to prevent POW/MIA investigations. If you don't believe me, watch the videos pasted below, made by veterans.

He is running on this "American Hero" platform, claiming the fact that he is a veteran qualifies him for the presidency. But if he has treated his own fellow veterans so shabbily, how willl he treat old people? Working people? Sick people? How will he treat you?

If you aren't rich like him, if you aren't a corporation, his voting record would indicate your needs are not high on his list of priorities.

John McCain Loves Cutting Veterans Health Benefits

2008-10-31T23:26:00.001-04:00

Even his greatest claim to fame is a joke. He does not and never has supported veterans. This is shameful.

Vietnam Veterans Against McCain

2008-10-31T23:22:00.001-04:00

John McCain's failure to support POWs/MIAs exposed

Early Vote, Early Vote, Early Vote: Don't be Intimidated!

2008-10-28T22:01:00.015-04:00

Get out there and vote if you haven't already! Disregard all of the intimidating misinformation out there telling people they can't vote for various false reasons. Don't let your vote be suppressed. Inform yourself about the lies circulating and let other people know so they aren't scared off. Following are some myths debunked:

1. It is NOT true that students have to vote in their home states. You can vote where you go to school.

2. It is NOT true that your driver's license address has to match your current address. You just need a govt. ID with a photo and a signature. Not sure? Call the Supervisor of Election in your county and ask before heading to the polls to early vote.

3. It is NOT true that the police will harass you, check your vehicle registration, or ticket you, etc while you are standing in line to vote.

4. It is NOT true that voting will raise your taxes or the taxes of your parents.

5. It is NOT true that you can't vote Democrat if you registered Republican.

6. It is NOT true that you will not be allowed to vote if you lost your house through foreclosure

7. It is NOT true that Nov. 5th is voting day for Democrats. yes there are flyers out there that say this). Nov. 4th is the LAST day to vote.

8. It is NOT true that if you show up to vote and you have outstanding or unpaid parking tickets that the police will be laying in wait to arrest you.

9. It is not true that being a resident alien disqualifies you from voting. All citizens, naturalized or natural-born can vote.

10. It is NOT true that you have to fill out a provisional ballot during early voting. If your right to vote is challenged, ask them what you need to do to make it right, get the situation fixed and then return to the polls before the 4th. If things seem fishy, call 1-877-235-6226 to report it and get help.

11. It is not true that you need a special voting ID or your voter registration card to vote. Some states require a govt. I.D.

12. It is NOT true that you have to commit to residing in the state after graduation in order to vote in the state.

13. Voting "straight ticket" will prevent you from voting for your presidential candidate. Don't do it!

14. It is NOT true that students who live in dorms cannot vote.

15. It is NOT true that you can vote by phone!!!

Good News in my state:

People in Florida were already willing to stand in line for hours to early vote. As of today our (Republican!) governor, Charlie Christ has extended poll hours from 8 to 4 to 7 to 7. 12 hours a day! to accommodate the huge turnout.

Lets not let up, people!

Get out there and vote and after you vote encourage everyone else to vote.

I am Barack: Obama and the Mixed Movement

2008-10-27T14:22:00.024-04:00

My sister, Jilchristina Vest, an important leader in the mixed movement and Co-Director of one of the oldest Interracial / Mixedrace organizations in the country, iPride, has started to tell all the mixedblood kids she knows that they are all "Barack".

When people ask you what you are, she tells them, just say, "I am Barack." She has even had t-shirts printed up on cafepress to get her message across.

Mixed folks are often accosted by complete strangers demanding

to know "WHAT they are? as if they are not humans, girls, boys, people, artists, etc. As if their existence demands explanation.

Mixed Studies scholars like myself who have analyzed the racial politics of mixedness know that this behavior is explained by the fact that Americans are notoriously uncomfor

table with racial ambiguity, wedded as we are to our racial classification scheme and its attendant hierarchies of oppression and privilege. If we don't know what race you are how will we know how to treat you?

Jil tells her youngsters to shout: "Say it loud: I'm Barack and I'm proud, giving a new mixedblood pride twist to an old black pride saying.

She tells mixed folk, "If people ask you why your mama is white and your daddy is Black tell them, "Because I am Barack!"

If people ask you why your daddy is an immigrant and your mommy is an American, tell them you are Barack!

If people ask you why you look the way you do (i.e. why are you so damn good looking?) tell them you are Barack!

I love being Barack, she tells them. She teaches young mixed people (whether they are Black and white, Black and Chinese, white and Latino, Black and Mexican, or Asian and Native American, etc.) to be proud of who they are despite all the teasing and alienation.

Be Barack, be proud!

Mixed folk are claiming Barack Obama as their own. Blacks have claimed him, environmentalists have claimed him, working and middle class people of all colors have claimed him, feminists have claimed him.

Barack Obama is a mixed man arguing for unity, peace, justice and equality across difference. The mixed movement is proud to claim him as one of their own. I am proud. I am Barack!

Fridays

2008-10-26T23:24:00.001-04:00

A poem about the mixed race experience

Early Voting and Volunteering for Change: Lets turn Florida Blue!

2008-10-24T15:07:00.010-04:00

I early voted! It was easy, despite reports I have heard all week about long lines. The short line I encountered may have had something to do with the early hour (8AM) and the pouring rain. I couldn't find the poling place and walked about in the rain for some time looking for it. The sidewalks were flooded and the rain soaked through my hat, my windbreaker, my jeans and my sneakers. But it was worth it. Whoohooo! Go Obama!

Everybody in the polling place was in a good mood. Well, almost everybody. There was one middle aged white men who scowled at me steadily the whole time I was there. How sad! The 40 people sitting in the polling place (yes, thats right! We had chairs! Too cool!) were an even mixture of African American, Latino Americans, Asian American, and Euro-Americans. In fact it was the most diverse group of people I have ever seen in Volusia county. Real democracy! I could not stop smiling.

My chairmate, a well-dressed African American woman on her way to work, meanwhile was stressing about our numbers. She was afraid we would be there all day and she would be late for work. When we arrived we were all given the kind of numbers the butcher gives you and then directed into the polling room. They had a lovely neon LED sign displaying the number being served. We were given #405 and #406 and the sign was calling for 99. She got very worried. Where are the 300 people who got here before us? And how did they manage to beat us there at 8:15?

Fortunately for her, the numbers were misleading. In ten minutes we were called. And the news just gets better! No computer ballots. No chad ballots. We colored in little bubbles next to our favorite candidates and propositions and deposited them into a big ballot eating machine guarded by one black man and one white man. I feel my ballot is safe. They thanked me for early voting about five times!

I voted against prop 2 which the anti-gay lobby got put on the ballot in their efforts to prevent gay folks from getting married. I am worried about that one. Why are straight people so insecure about their partnerships? Well, I guess if I was a straight man I might be afraid of lesbians. Men can't really compete in the bedroom, can they?........anywho......

After voting I decided to truck my sopping wet, overly ethusiastic self on over to the Obama campaign headquarters to volunteer. I was there so early they weren't open yet but the one intern that was there setting up kindly let me in anyway. He was nice and unassuming and explained the phonebanking to me. He was nothing like the racist white lady who had greeted me that last time I went to volunteer. Refreshing!

At 9 Am he handed me a cell phone and a ridiculously thick multi-page list of names and phone numbers. Three hours later, I had made it through 4 sheets of paper, had called over 70 people, talked to 15, left about 50 messages and tallied up many Obama voters.

Many of the people on my list were elderly and cranky. They were fun! Nobody wanted to early vote and few had time to volunteer (the standard response to my suggestion that they early vote was something along the lines of "I'm votin' on votin' day!") but a couple of people gave nice speeches about how great Obama is. They were very enthusiastic. All but two said they were voting for Obama. Nobody said they were voting for McCain. One 83 year old lady said she was too old to vote (and no she did not want a ride to the polls) but we chatted about her ailing health for awhile before she realized she didn't know me.

There was one man who went off on a rant yelling in my ear that Obama was a liar and was gonna raise our taxes. That was one of my first calls, what a shocker. What do you say to someone like that? I started trying to explain Barack's tax plan to him but it quickly became obvious that engagement was of no interest to him. He called Obama a commie and hung up on me. Really?

After only being there about an hour I became the source of some campaign office buzz when I reported a case of what appeared to be a possible voting scam recounted to me by a Latina citizen I called. She explained to me that she regrettably could not vote as she was still awaiting her citizenship papers to arrive in the mail but that both her husband and her son were planning to vote. Her husband was worried because someone had called them the night before and told them that the husband was "not on their list" and would not be able to vote. Was that true, she asked me?

I explained to her that nobody on a phone could tell her whether or not she could vote and that she should send hubby to the polls. She told me that the people on the phone said the hubby might not be able to vote for Obama because he was registered as a Republican. "We used to be Republicans but we don't want to vote for Republicans anymore,"she explained. She was really worried.

All the bigwhigs in the office were worried it was a scam. The main Obama field officer asked me one question: was this woman Latina? Yes, I replied, surprised she knew that when I had not told her about the accent or the citizenship issue. She explained that Republicans have been targeting Latino voters and trying to intimidate them out of voting. Scary!

I called the woman back and encouraged her to go vote ASAP. She assured me she had just called her husband and he was on his way. That's right, McCain thugs, you are no match for Obama volunteers!

Are the Republicans that desperate? Really!

On an up note, two African American sistas came to phonebank with me and we had some laughs in between our phone calls. Both had volunteered before and one was volunteering at the polls on election day as well. Impressive! Some of the white folks started to give us hostile looks (too much laughing I guess) and one started to make condescending comments to the older black lady and I knew it was time for me to leave. It was just a matter of time before I was gonna say something.

I am not a southerner and my tolerance for bad behavior from racists is much lower than it is for the average southern African American. As one Black man in Alabama (who I had a chat with about racism at a rest stop) explained to me once when I was driving to Fl from Seattle, I am what southern white folks call an "outside agitator from up north." I actually get indignant when confronted with racism, speak my mind and confront racists head on. Trouble!

I wish I could volunteer everyday but for some reason I have this annoying thing called a job. Florida is still a battle-ground state. We need to turn it blue! Hurry, hurry before another racist girl makes up another sorry story about black knife-wielding Obama supporters targeting McCain voters! Sister, please!

Early Voting in Florida

2008-10-24T07:16:00.003-04:00

Its dark out and its raining cats and dogs but I am going off to early vote. I am so excited. I dreamt about the election all night and woke up at the ridiculous hour of 6 Am. I decided to get up and check the early voting schedule and was happy to find the early voting starts at 8 Am today. That means the line probably forms around 7 AM. This is my first day off since early voting began. Normally I would be sleeping very late today but I NEED to vote!

Thousands of Floridians have already voted. The polls have been jam packed every day since they opened them. One to five hour lines I am told -but nobody is complaining. My bank teller, a Latino fellow, told me he has tried to vote twice but could not stay long enough to get to the front of the line. He plans to go back today.

I think for the first time in the history of this country, we people of color feel like we have some one to vote for who cares about us and our concerns. It is exhilarating. We are full of Hope!

Feminists for Obama: Breast Cancer, Domestic Violence, and Incest

2008-10-21T18:20:00.001-04:00

Obama: Hope for Transformation with Love

2008-10-21T16:32:00.009-04:00

In South Dakota and Indiana, anti-choice advocates are trying to pass abortion bans, hillbillies in my neighborhood are stealing Obama signs, and some fool is calling for the creation of a congressional committee on un-Americans. Sound familiar? Did this imbecile flunk that part of US History? You know, the shameful part where we engaged in the scape-goating and harrassing of politicians, intellectuals, and artists in the name of McCarthyism? Everybody was a commie? Ring any bells?

Yes, these are crazy times we are living in. But they are also hopeful times. I finally had a free moment to head down to the local Obama office to pick up my lawn sign and posters (I Got three) and sign up to volunteer.

I really believe this man can change things for the better- for all of us: not just the rich or the male or the white or the christian. ALL of us. I initially thought he was far too centrist for my liking (and I am still hoping he will get more progressive with time) but this candidate really does offer hope to this beleagered nation and Powell is right, he is a "transformative" leader. He brings people together and promises real change.

And he did something that made me smile today. While giving a talk in Florida, some loud-mouthed audience member yelled out, "I love you, Obama" to which Obama replied, "Love you Back!"

Love is the only thing that can transform hate and fear and confusion and conflict. Lets all love each other back.

AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka on Racism and Obama

2008-10-21T13:31:00.001-04:00

A POWERFUL SPEECH AGAINST RACISM BY A WHITE UNION LEADER

Good Idea, Powell! Lets Respect ALL Americans

2008-10-19T18:26:00.011-04:00

I just returned from Pittsburgh where I am happy to report I saw twice as many Obama bumper stickers as McCain bumper stickers. I also came home to see many more Obama yard signs springing up in the neighboring town, not known for its progressive populace. In general though I must say that I have not seen many bumper or street signs for either candidate.

I can't help wondering if maybe people are keeping their choice to themselves because the don't want their neighbors to know who they are voting for. So many conservatives and Republicans are jumping camp, I suspect there are a bunch of closet Obama supporters.

Republican Colin Powell, the most famous fence-jumper, made a statement today endorsing Democratic Obama and providing a great analysis of both candidates.

But he did more than that. He criticized some of the anti-American aspects of the ugly turn this campaign has taken of late. He decried the anti- Muslim sentiments being expressed by the McCain campaign and more generally by conservatives in this country- especially via email and talk radio. Everybody is afraid to defend Muslims and to remind people that it is a mistake to disparage a whole religion just because the United States has enemies who are also Muslim.

I for one am sick of hearing all the anti-Muslim rhetoric. Hate speech is hate speech regardless of who you are taking hatefully about.

Many Americans are Muslim and they deserve just as much respect as Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Native American Church, Spiritualist, Vodun, and Daoist Americans.

The word American is NOT synonymous with white or Christian. All Americans deserve respect.

Thank you, Secretary Powell for reminding Americans that derisive and divisive demagoguery is always a bad idea.

Republican Colin Powell Endorses Barack Obama

2008-10-19T18:17:00.001-04:00

A very detailed and well-argued statement explaining why Obama is the best choice for president

Obama May Indeed Be Too Awesome (Dinner Speech, part 2)

2008-10-16T22:52:00.004-04:00

Obama at Al Smith Dinner -Part 1-

2008-10-16T22:51:00.001-04:00

What the Real Joe (and Jane) Plumbers Want:

2008-10-16T17:13:00.004-04:00

The United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters has endorsed Barack Obama.

Joe the Plumber is not a plumber????

2008-10-16T17:07:00.003-04:00

Newest info out: Joe the plumber s NOT a plumber! He has no plumbing license in Toledo.

According to the local chapter of the Plumbers Union:

“All contractors are licensed, and he does not have a license, either as a contractor or a plumber,” the union official said, citing a search of government records. “I can’t find that he’s ever even applied for any kind of apprenticeship, and he has never belonged to local 189 in Columbus, which is what he claims on his Facebook page.” (NYTimes)

The Truth about Joe the plumber

2008-10-16T10:10:00.008-04:00

Joe just interviewed in Ohio and guess what?

1. Joe is NOT middle class if he is telling the truth about his income. He is rich but uneducated.
2. Joe likes to hunt and fish and thinks he should be able to buy a high speed fishing boat instead of pay more taxes. He currently owes back taxes.
3. Joe @ 250,000/year would make more money than 85% of all Americans although he calls himself "just a plumber".
4. Joe thinks it is great we went into Iraq and thinks we delivered freedom to the Iraquis and that it was like saving a person who doesnt know Jesus ( Joe is a Christian)
5. Joe has contempt for the poor- he complained that poor people in the United States have cell phones. His words: "People work the system left and right to get more out of welfare, to get more out of state assistance, federal assistance."
6. Was very upset when he found out at 18 that he is a "yankee" and was not born in the South.
7. His real name is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher
8. He is a single father to one son and drives a Durango.
9. Joe likes to bemoan his poor childhood but identifies with the rich. His words: "you need rich people. I mean, who are you going to work for?"
10. Joe is a conservative, registered Republican, and belongs to a fringe radical right wing group but now says he doesn't remember joining it

Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe the Plumber and Sacrificing Women

2008-10-16T00:23:00.008-04:00

Just home from a video-watching debate held at a local pub. I orderd ginger ale, ate olives and laughed and cheered along with a group of mostly 50-70 year old white progressives and a a few local drunks heckling on both sides. I was one of two people of color and among a handful under 50.

In what was by far the most exciting debate thus far, we saw Obama confront McCain on his offensive audience members, explain his healthcare program in some detail and explain fair trade to us. MCCain reminded us, as he and Palin are fond of doing these days, that Americans are angry. He also made it clear that he, John McCain was angry and introduced us to a mythical figure, John the plumber who he warns is becoming angry.

McCain appeared to be reading from a script and often avoided answering the questions and retreated to his talking points coming across at times as confused and incoherent. He really looked lost and frustrated half of the time. Obama was llke a rock who could not be moved.

McCain also let us know that he did not think women's health was important and that women should be forced to have babies even if their doctors said it would kill them to do so. What the*%&??????

McCain's high point was when he told Obama that if he wanted to run against Bush he would have had to run 4 years ago. Quite a zinger. Too bad that he failed at any time in the 90 minute debate to distinguish himself from Bush. Why can't he? This was his last chance.

Obama did a good job of pointing out the lies McCain told regarding Ayers, Acorn, his tax plan, and his so-called associates. He also explained his economic policies, health policies, and education policies in some detail. McCain only had one educational policy- vouchers. He parroted over and over his lie that Obama plans to raise taxes. I think McCain's campaign people should watch the fact-checking shows on TV. Their lies have been exposed ad nauseum. Why do they keep repeating them? Are they stupid? Are they appealling to the mentally challenged or to people who don't watch TV news? What are they thinking?

Obama cleverly pointed out that McCain's claims to be interested in helping special needs kids were insincere given his promise to freeze the entire federal budget.

McCain never responded to Obama on specific points giving the debate a one-sided feel to it. Obama responded directly to critiques made by McCain but McCain never responded to Obama's critiques which seemed odd.

The weirdest performance in the debate was that given by Joe the Plumber. Who is he and why am I supposed to identify with this white man? Androcentrism is played out. White men do not form the majority of this country and the majority of us do not make more than 250,000 dollars a year, regardless of occupation.

Joe the rich plumber does not represent me or you. My body is not a baby-breeding machine and I am not wiling to die for some man who thinks I am a second class citizen whose life and health is of peripheral importance.

Fact-Checking the Election Every Step of the Way

2008-10-14T22:36:00.007-04:00

My mom thinks I should listen to Chris Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. She says that as her daughter I should "do what she tells me" by, among other things, listening to her favorite conservative radio talk show hosts. As a gay woman of color I do not think I should subject myself to racist, sexist, homophobic hate speech VOLUNTARILY. Filial piety has its limits!

But maybe my mom is right. It seems that if I had been listening to right wing talk radio, I would have known about Joe the plumber weeks before he "won" the last presidential debate (according to McCain). And then, instead of wasting time writing expose blogs on this fellow, I could have moved on to other news.

Like all the lies McCain told during the debate ( on taxes, Columbia, Roe V. Wade, Supreme court justices, nuclear waste,Ayers, etc.)

But then why should I bother? Anyone can check factcheck.org and truth fightsback.com. Anyone can watch CNN's factcheck show. I recommend everyone do so on a regular basis!

Apparently McCain, in his technological illiteracy doesnt know that his lies are checkable. If he did, would he have celebrated Joe the man who is not a plumber but a contractor, who makes only $40,000 a year, is not panning to buy a small business, and is not an undecided voted but a registered Republican. Apparently Joe the plumber did not know his facts would be checked either.

We only have 18 days left, people. Lets get out there and spread information, not misinformation!

Then lets all vote!

Loving Vs Virginia: 40th Anniversary of Interracial Marriage

2008-10-14T20:24:00.001-04:00

1967 Loving Vs. Virginia. Why I am here. Why Obama is here. Lets keep fighting against the hate!

Palin Abused Power According to Alaskan Legislators

2008-10-12T14:14:00.020-04:00

"I did nothing wrong" Palin insists after a bipartisan committee created by a Republican-controlled committee of Alaskan legislators published a 263-page report declaring that she "abused the powers of her office." and violated "the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."

According to the Washington Post, the Republican-appointed Investigator Steven Branchflower, "found that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin abused her executive power when she and her husband engaged in a campaign to oust her former brother-in-law from the state police force." (James V, Grimaldi and Kimberly Kindy),

The Alaska Legislature’s bipartisan Legislative Council unanimously commissioned the investigation in July, a month before Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate.

According to the New York Times, "In the report, the independent investigator, Stephen E. Branchflower, a former prosecutor in Anchorage, said that Ms. Palin wrongfully allowed her husband, Todd, to use state resources as part of the effort to have Trooper Wooten dismissed." (Serge F. Kovaleski)

Although he was never elected to any public office, apparently the "First Dude" thinks he has a say in how the government is run?

The report says Sarah Palin knowingly “permitted Todd Palin to use the governor’s office and the resources of the governor’s office, including access to state employees, to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.”

But the report doesn't just blame the unelected spouse of wrongdoing. The report accuses Gov. Palin of violating a statute (39.52 110(a)) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act which reads:

"The legislature affirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust."

The report found that Palin abused that public trust and acted unethically for personal gain. Sounds a lot less like "maverick" or reform behavior and a whole lot more like "the old boys network" where even unelected boys have power.

Palin is un-phased by this legislative condemnation. She has decided she is not to blame and guess who is?

In a desperate move to avoid taking responsibility for her actions Palin has gone to the extreme of blaming Obama for the findings of her own state legislature.

Really?

Really! There seems no limit to what the McCain/Palin ticket is willing to blame on others, especially their opponent.

The McCain/Palin campaign spokeswoman explained that " the report showed that the investigation was a “partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters." And Palin has been stumping claiming this investigation is an Obama-pressured plot against her.

Really? Are they really trying to claim that Obama's reach is that far? That he controls the Alaskan legislature? Really?

But why not when according to McCain and Palin, Obama is also responsible for:
1) the decline of the entire economy (because, like McCain, he has worked with Fannie May lobbyists?)
2) the injuries faced by American troops in Iraq (like McCain, he voted against body armor. Cindy McCain has amnesia about the fact that McCain voted against another version of the same bill, thus denying troops body armor the same year)
3) Palin's inability to answer simple questions posed by the press (the liberal gotcha media composed entirely of Obama supporters who puppet-like he also apparently controls?)

Now Obama is also responsible for Palin's abuse of power. Really? Are they serious?

We don't need a woman who lets her husband control her even after she is elected to a major public office, representing women in the white house. We don't need a "first dude" in the White House.

We don't need a liar, who when caught lies more and blames others for her misdeeds, to be one heartbeat away from running the country.

CNN: Palin abuse case

2008-10-12T00:56:00.001-04:00

The worst kind of liar: the kind who keeps lying after she is caught

CNN: Palin Found to be lying About Obama

2008-10-08T22:21:00.002-04:00

Palin's claim found to be false after fact-checked

The T word: McCain and Palin's Latest Desperate Tactic

2008-10-07T19:46:00.010-04:00

When all else fails, go for an ad hominem attack. Cant beat your opponent on issues? On policies? On solutions to America's financial crisis? Well, you can always go after his or her character. And if you cant go after anything he or she specifically has done or said that you disagree with, then its best to play the terrorist card. After all, anyone who gets called a terrorist is ipso facto a very bad man.

The only problem with this is that the word terrorist is now being bandied about with real abandon. It is being used more as a generalized derisive heckle than as an actual description these days.

People can be labled terrorists for having a particular religious practice (Islam), for looking South Asian or Arab (like me or Obama), for having a name that sounds similar to that of a terrorist (like Osama) or for living in the same neighborhood as someone who might once have been a terrorist (like Ayers).

All this terrorist name-calling is the racism of the new world order. Racists cant come right out and say they don't want Obama because he is black or half-black or brown. They can't say they don't want anyone who is not 100% black. They cant say they would rather have a dishonest old guy and incompetent young woman who are both white than anyone not white, no matter how competent.

So they do what they can. They call him by his suspiciously Muslim sounding middle name. They cal him mysterious, sneaky, unknown, dishonest (all racial stereotypes typically attributed to Arabs) and they try to paint him as a foreigner (as if suddenly Hawaii is not a part of the United States).

The McCain/Palin ticket is desperate and they are appealing to the racists among us to join their panic.

Too bad its too late for that tactic to work. Obama has already won the war. Despite the racists. Racism is irrational and it is taking our country a very long time to figure that out..... but by and by I DO think we are learning to be better than that.

SNL Parody of the Debate

2008-10-05T19:32:00.001-04:00

Palin mastered not answering questions and Biden was excessively effusive

Palin/Biden Debate: Anti-Intellectualism, Class, and Meanness

2008-10-02T21:24:00.023-04:00

After seeing Sarah Palin debate, I have to admit she is a skilled rhetoritician and to be honest after five gaffes in 8 days, my expectations for her were pretty low. The fact that she got through the entire debate without getting too tangled up in any tongue-tying grammatically incorrect incoherencies was truly surprising. Too bad she had nothing of substance to say and refused to answer most of the questions. But what was most appalling about her performance was her suoerficiality, her anti-intellectualism, and her complete disregard for the truth. Have we reached a new low in electoral politics?

Why was misrepresenting the truth a central debate strategy for Palin? Is she really still still saying that Obama wants to raise taxes when every news source in the country has revealed that as a lie? Is she really still claiming McCain had a pivotal role in the bailout bill when all reports indicate he had a marginal or destructive role if any? And did she think none of us listened to the Presidential debate ourselves and that we would believe her misrepresentation of it when she claimed Obama had called for talks with terrorists while she and McCain were devoted to diplomacy? McCain was very clearly arguing against diplomacy. Sitting down to talk with leaders you disagree with is the definition of diplomacy. She repeated the lie that McCain supports regulation of Wall Street when his entire record suggests otherwise and when Katie Couric asked her to name one instance of him voting for regulation she could not.

Governor Palin claims she is "Joe Six-Pack," meanwhile her yearly household income is over a quarter of a million. She is rich, not middle class, not working class, not poor. What she does have in common with many people who are working class is a substandard education. She attended five different colleges before finally getting a bachelors degree in journalism. Despite her background in journalism she now claims all reporters are elitist and out to get her with "gotcha journalism." Her running mate is still less educated than she is, having only attended the US Naval Academy where he was ranked the 894th out of 899 students. Neither one of them is working class. Neither one of them was denied opportunities to get education but both of them were poor students and neither of them has pursued the higher levels of education their class status gave them access to.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, might have been too smart to debate Palin. He actually answered every question (save one) he was asked and actually gave reasons, cited dates, and recited facts. He actually demonstrated intimate knowledge of foreign policy and a thorough understanding of legislative history. Palin, for her part, was very good at towing the Republican party line. She also lied a lot. For the life of me I still cant understand how her ticket can lie so much with a straight face. But she had almost no content and was very good at changing the subject, appealing to jingoism and talking in condescending and hostile tones about Joe Biden. She came across as a remarkably mean-spirited person but not a passionate mean-spirited person. She did not seem to be guided by any sense of justice or any real political mission. "Say it isnt so, Joe?" Really?

Biden meanwhile spent all of his time being civil, calm, and polite. He never attacked Palin, not once. Although she attacked him on a personal level, he was careful never to take an aggressive stance towards her, never critiquing her record or her positions on anything. I think he should be commended for this. After watching all her embarrassing interviews this week, I for one would not have been able to keep a straight face while she spoke if I were debating her.

What Palin does have is a real command of fake folksy appeal, superficial cutsey poses and colloquial expressions devoid of any content, designed it appears, to manipulate what she must think is a decidedly stupid electorate. While she repeated vague expressions and stock vocabulary, Biden kept providing detailed policy proposals and making detailed contrasts between the goals and records of Senators McCain and Obama.

Palin was unable to answer the only hard question she got - that regarding what the constitution says the role of the vice president is. I don't know why the questions were all so easy. Was the moderator afraid of embarrassing her after Palin endured so many embarrassing interviews this week? Who knows.

Biden wrote the Violence Against Women Act (which McCain voted against twice). And he cried! The man has ovaries! Women's rights will be much safer on his watch.

McCain's sexist, racist, homophobic record

2008-09-30T21:09:00.006-04:00

John McCain calls himself a maverick but when it comes to his positions on race, gender, and sexuality, his views either line up with or are to the right of those of George W. Bush. In case the fact that he wants to spend "a hundred years" in Iraq, fighting endlessly regardless of whether or not we can ever achieve anything in the way of a goal there isn't enough, his racist, sexist and homophobic views may give us all even more reason to oppose his candidacy.

To familiarize ourselves with McCain's position on women's issues, we may want to look at the Republican platform, which according to the National Organization of Women (NOW), "supports a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would undo Roe v. Wade, and legislation granting Fourteenth Amendment rights to "unborn children," which would treat an abortion as murder in all fifty states. The platform also declares allegiance to the global gag rule, rejects the ratification of CEDAW and calls for increased funding for abstinence-only education." In addition, McCain has opposed legislation which would require equal pay for equal work and take on the wage gap that results in [white] women getting only 77 cents on the dollar a [white] man makes. Women of color make even less. According to the National Organization of Women, "African-American women [are] paid only 71 cents and Latinas just 58 cents on... [a white man's] dollar."

With regard to his racist views, Mccain voted repeatedly against making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday and even after the law was passed, supported the then Arizona governor's decision to rescind the state's observation of the holiday in his state. Additionally, according to the New York Times (2000) McCain has argued that the confederate flag is a symbol of heritage not racism. He also voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 four times.

As for his views on gay right, according to the Human Rights Campaign, "like President Bush, Senator McCain opposes equal benefits for same-sex couples. Like President Bush, Senator McCain opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to prohibit discrimination against GLBT Americans in the workplace. Like President Bush, Senator McCain opposes expanding the hate crimes act to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Like President Bush, Senator McCain supports the military’s discriminatory "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy."

What more do we need to know about this man?

McCain's Sexism Lies in his Choice of a "fall guy"

2008-09-29T17:44:00.006-04:00

Its easy to make fun of Sarah Palin. She has been thrust into the spotlight and asked questions she is totally unprepared to answer. Add to that a nervous tendency on her part to keep talking long after she has finished saying anything of substance. Did McCain really ever expect his VP pick to be able to do any better than she currently is?

I doubt it. The man is an old fashioned sexist. He likes his women young, conservative, pretty, and silent. They should listen to their men, do as they're told, and never challenge the power structure.

So McCain did not pick Governor Palin for her qualifications or her intelligence. She may very well be intelligent. But he picked her for her good looks, her youthfulness, her inexperience and her compliant conservative stance. He wanted someone he could control, someone he could keep under his thumb. He wanted a VP who would tow his party line, not challenge him, not outshine him but make him look good. In other words, he wanted a trophy VP.

Trophy wives are rarely what they seem. They play a role and fulfill a request in exchange for benefits they deem valuable. They are often much more intelligent and much more aware than their husbands would like to believe. They are victims of exploitation but they are also agents of their own survival in a society that values women's looks and sexual and reproductive capacities over their intellects. They are clever women who seek to circumvent the reality of women getting paid 75 cents to every dollar a man gets paid. They bypass the glass ceiling which keeps women out of the highest paying jobs and the most powerful political positions in this country by appealing directly to those in power.

But trophy wives, despite their agency, are victims of sexist exploitation because in a sexist society, all women are victims of patriarchal control to some degree. And thus we must recognize that Governor Sarah Palin is a victim of sexism despite her agency.

We should be critical of her but we should be more critical of John McCain. Its just easier to criticize her. She is an embarrassment to women (and especially to feminists) precisely because she is a woman and because she has gotten closer to power than any other woman thusfar. Even those of us who aren't Republicans never wanted to see a woman fail so terribly in the public eye.

Because while those of us who are feminists know that electing a woman to public office is not necessarily a feminist move, and that the mere possession of a vagina does not make a person pro-woman, much less a feminist (Sarah Palin is neither ), as feminists we understand that the public failure of any woman fuels sexism and impedes the advance of feminism.

But Palin's failure should not surprise us. McCain, as a sexist man, would never chose a highly intelligent, independent-thinking woman to be his Vice President. He picked her to provide his candidacy with an ornament. He thought she would make him look good, make him appealing to women, and ultimately leave him and his ideas in peace. He also hired her to be a distraction from himself. As long as she was making news, people would overlook him. When he wasn't shining, she would shine. That is what trophy wives do. The men who have them are rarely much to look at at. They lack the good looks, charm and allure that their trophy wives bring to the partnership. Likewise Governor Palin brought charisma to John's campaign. John McCain is neither good-looking, young, nor charming. He has no charisma. He is not inspiring. She is...or was until she started granting interviews.

Now, Sarah Palin has become John's fall guy. Everybody is so busy criticizing, mocking , and laughing at Palin, it is easy to overlook McCain. It seems unlikely at this point that McCain will do anything that will disappoint and shock us as much as Palin's recent gaffes on the economy and foreign policy. But lets not let him make Palin his fall guy. Lets follow these recent revelations back to their source: John McCain's sexism.

Palin and Katie Couric

2008-09-29T16:54:00.001-04:00

A very funny parody of the actual interview.

Election Drama Betties and Bobs

2008-09-26T18:12:00.010-04:00

Am I watching the news or have I inadvertently switched to a soap opera? There is no way to tell for sure. I see lots of white men wearing suits and sounding serious. Looks likes the news...maybe they are covering a soap opera? Hmmmm.

Lets see...one of the presidential candidates picked a VP candidate whose teenage daughter is pregnant (and who despite being anti-choice, thinks that in the case of her daughter, the family should have a private choice), is under investigation for abuse of power (as a governor) and is refusing to cooperate with investigators. In case that was not enough drama for one politician's family, she has a preacher who is an avowed modern day witch-hunter. No, I am not making this up!

In recent news, much buzz has been made of her apparent cluelessness regarding foreign policy, after failing in an interview to be able to answer a question about the Bush Doctrine because she had no idea what it was. Now, she actually thinks that running the executive branch of a state that shares a border (land or maritime) with a foreign country gives her foreign policy experience. This may sound like old news but believe it or not she is still repeating this foolishness even after all the laughter had died down after the first three times she said it. Check out the Katie Couric interview (linked above).

According to this logic, the governors of: Washington, Montana, North dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California all also have foreign policy experience. In fact, according to this logic, Alaska is a lot like a third of all the states in the US. They all share a border with another country.

But she shouldn't feel bad. Her running mate thinks Spain is a Latin American country. He also thinks, "the fundamentals" of an economy that is currently crumbling before our eyes, are strong.

In recent drama, presidential hopeful John McCain decided to "suspend " his campaign so he could rush to Washington to solve the nation's financial crisis. By suspend, he did not mean close his election offices, stop running election ads, or stop giving interviews. It seems he did not even mean that he would literally fly to Washington. Although he eventually (two days later) did end up in Washington, he did not bother to actually read the Paulson proposal being debated before he arrived and was unable to contribute any substance at the photo-op presidential meeting.

He vowed not to debate Barack Obama in Mississiippi until a "deal was brokered." Then, after various senators went on camera to report that his arrival in Washington not only did NOT help the process but that in fact it hindered it, he continued to claim he was busy helping to get his party behind the proposal and would stay until the job was done. Then without a deal being made, without the job being done, he changed his mind and said OK I will debate Obama after all.

But his inability to make a decision and stick to it is nothing new. Despite a long career of being a deregulator of Wall Street, he now claims he supports the regulation of the economy by the government. Really?

But reversing his positions on major political issues is nothing new to McCain. He has been doing it for years. He has flip-flopped on his positions on Immigration, gay marriage, abortion, terrorism, torture, the Iraq war, tax breaks for the rich, windfall profits tax, offshore drilling, MLK day, South African disinvestment, the confederate flag, and teaching creationism in schools, among others.

Isnt there a drug for that kind of moodiness? Is the man addicted to drama?

Sarah Palin and Rape: I Say Vote for Your Vagina

2008-09-17T23:03:00.009-04:00

In case anyone is still confused, more information has come out about Palin's anti-woman record. Even Republican women have to pause when they learn that when Sarah Palin was the mayor of Wasila, Texas she required women who had been raped to pay for their own rape kits in order for their rapes to be investigated.

I am not making this up!!!!!! It seems too horrid to be true but unfortunately it IS true! And no, its not an Alaskan tradition. Wasila was the only city in the state who did this.

What kind of a person asks the victims of a horrible crime of any kind to pay for their own investigation? What kind of woman subjects rape victims to further humiliation by asking them to come up with some cold hard cash for a painful and humiliating pelvic exam in the hopes that some evidence will be found? What was she thinking? Don't all women know that rape is always a threat? How many women don't have friends, sisters, mothers who have been raped? In a country where one in four women will be raped in her lifetime how did she manage to remain immune from compassion for the victims of sexual assault?

But, hey, it gets worse! She didn't stay a mayor! She became a governor and with all that power, did she do anything to protect rape victims? NO, but she had enough power to fire someone who did try to help rape victims. By her own account, her excuse for firing the man who refused to fire her trooper brother in law, was her anger about his intention to obtain federal funding for pursuing the most serious sex offenders, including violent child molesters. Thats right, she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for seeking to taking action against rape when she did told him not to.

According to the Huffington Post, Campaign officials claim to have fired Monegan because of insubordination and that "the last straw was a trip Monegan planned to Washington in July to seek federal money for investigating and prosecuting sexual assault cases."

Really? What exactly does she have against pursuing rapists?

Maybe, one might wonder, rape really isn't a big issue up in the hinterland? Maybe its too cold for women to get raped that far north? Maybe Palin was just prioritizing other issues more pressing in Alaska?

Think again. According to the FBI, Alaska has the highest rate of rape in the country. That's right, of all the states in the US, Alaska is the last place to go if you have a vagina. They have the HIGHEST RATE OF RAPE of all states.

And its not a new problem. According to the Alaska Family Violence Prevention Project, "since 1976, Alaska has ranked in the top five states in the nation for the highest rate of reported rape per capita." and " Alaska has 6 times the national average of reported child sexual assault." Sexual assault is even more of an issue in Alaska than anywhere else.

Palin may have a vagina but she won't protect yours. Or mine. Or my child's. Or anyone elses. Oh, and if you get raped in Palin's America, not only might you be required to pay for your own rape kit, but you will also be required to give birth to your rapist's child.

Having a Vagina Doesn't make You a Feminist

2008-09-08T09:45:00.004-04:00

Having a Vagina doesn't make you a feminist, thought admittedly, it ought to.

The mere possession of a vagina goes a long way in determining what kind of life you are allowed to live in today's world.
First of all, if you have a vagina in the United States you will only earn 72 cents on every dollar persons possessing a penis will earn. Since the only jobs that actually require the use of a particular sex member are all illegal, its not at all clear how one's genitalia explains the unequal pay problem in the United States.

But it may make sense for those in possession of a a vagina to band together and fight for equal pay for equal work.

Obama and Biden, both lacking the essential female member ( and no doubt envying those of us who do possess it) will fight for equal pay for women.

Palin, though possessing a vagina, will not.

Having a vagina means that regardless of your politics, you are at risk for being raped, getting pregnant without intending to, and being forced to give birth to children you may not be physically, psychologically, or economically prepared to care for.

Sarah Palin's running mate, Mccain, voted against the Violence Against Women Act. Palin herself has dne nothing to address the epidemic rape and violence against women rates in this country

One in four women in the United States will be raped in their lifetime, regardless of age, color, class, size, religion, beauty, activities engaged in, clothing worn, amount of alcohol consumed.

Distinguishing features of your average rape victim? Possession of a vagina. Other distinguishing features? None.

Palin thinks that if you get raped you should be required by law to give birth to your rapist's child. But don't expect any help from a McCain/Palin government while you are struggling to afford your pregnancy. Palin voted against Alaska funding for teen mother housing just this year.

A person possessing a vagina can also count on a lifetime of having strange men and women in white coats probe the inner most regions of their body in the interest of health. Women are expected to get annual gynecological exams and can be subjected to gynecological exams anytime they go to the hospital. If you are a working class or poor woman (which includes the majority of women of color), and you have less than adequate health insurance you can count on fewer choices in whose hands end up in your vagina. You can also count on being subject to rushed, less qualified hands.

Number of times a person possessing a penis can expect to have his genitalia probed during his lifetime by a stranger? Zero times.

If you have a vagina, your vagina is not a private matter. It is a part of the public domain.

But, according to Sarah Palin, health care is a private matter and a capitalist concern. Let healthcare companies fight for your business in a fair market, she says. And besides, according to Palin, we are not women in need of compassionate medical care but are "consumers [who] should take more responsibility for their own health." (New York Times, 8/30)

A person possessing a vagina is also required to sacrifice her sexuality and to risk her life when her government deems it necessary. She does not have a right to use her vagina for pleasure without paying a price.

Chances that a person with a penis will be required to undergo excessive pain, give up his job, quit school, lose a scholarship, be kicked out of his home, or be labeled a whore, as a result of having sex? None.

If at any time in this person's life, a person with a vagina opts to have sexual relations with a member of the opposite sex, she is at risk of getting pregnant and in a no-choice world, being required to carry to term the fetus, despite the risks involved. Pregnancy can kill you, it can disable you for life, and it is one of the most intensely painful events the human body can go through.

Circumstances where a person with a penis will be forced to undergo excessive pain, risk to life and limb, and possible permanent disability without their consent? Only one: a draft.

Sarah Palin thinks no pregnancy should be terminated no matter the circumstances and no matter the risk to women's health.

Having a vagina doesn't make you a feminist but it ought to. Caring about the rights of people regardless of what genitalia they are born with may not make you a feminist either but it will make you a supporter of human rights.

Whether or not you possess a vagina, please remember to protect the rights of persons with vaginas when you vote in this election.

Some Good Done

2008-06-14T04:12:00.001-04:00

Biologically I am
A mixture More and less
Complicated than I claim to be
Culturally

My mother my father they
Have their own identities
My phenotype is another story
Entirely

Where I grew up and how
Who my ancestors were
And why they died
All conspire to define me
In ways that are beyond even me.

Ambiguity is my home
Either/or does not apply
And my existence defies
So many names and claims
Of place
It would be a lie to check a race

All I know for certain
Is that it matters
That my existence
Confounds you
That your inability to classify me
Bewilders you
And there is some good done
Each time I cause confusion
There is some good done

Why Ranking Oppressions Never Works

2008-05-15T13:05:00.008-04:00

This election has brought out the ugly in many people. At the heart of this ugliness is a mistake. A mistaken belief that we can rank the oppressions we face in order of severity and make decisions about how and when to address different forms of injustice accordingly. This belief is misguided.

We don't need a woman in the white house before a black man because women are more oppressed than blacks. We don't need a black man in the white house first because blacks are more oppressed than women. These are the kinds of arguments that only make sense in a world where Black women don't exist. Blacks are not men. Women are not white. And none of us is class neutral. Some of us are gay, some of us are immigrants, some of us are disabled. There are no pure categories.

And there is no hierarchy of oppression we can chart which will resolve this. White woman benefit from white skin privilege. Black men benefit from male privilege. Straight people benefit from heterosexual privilege. Able-bodied people benefit from abelist privilege. Middle class people benefit from class privilege. Skinny people benefit from size privilege. There are not pure categories of people and there are very few people who do not simultaneouly benefit from some form of privilege while being oppressed as a result of their membership in some group. (The obvious exception is middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied white men. They are not oppressed and they are very privileged).

So can white women claim to be more oppressed than black men? Can Black men claim to be more oppressed than white women? No, of course not. They are privileged and oppressed in different ways. And their maleness is qualified by their blackness, their femaleness is qualified by their whiteness.

Sexism is raced. Racism is gendered. Oppression is complicated.

So it is absurd to say that it would be worse for Obama if he were a woman or worse for Clinton if she were black unless you are willing to recognize that they would both have to turn into black women for the claim to make sense. Would a black women have a harder time in this election than either a black man or a white woman? Probably she would since currently most people appear to consider the possibility unthinkable. Black women don't exist for most of the commentators. Otherwise they would not consistently overlook the fact that Obama and Clinton differ in both race AND gender.

Their race/gender analogies only work in the absence of Black women. Can a woman who does not exist run for office? Probably not. But if a Black woman ran we would have to take into account her class, her sexuality, her able-bodiedness in addition to her race and gender.

Maybe this country is ready for a black man or a white woman but not both. Maybe the outcome of the election will be a result of whether the electorate is more racist or more sexist but we can never truly know since we don't have a white man running against a white woman or a black man running against a black woman. Race and gender are tangled up in these two candidates and other factors are also playing an important role.

Oppression is complicated. Too complicated to be ranked and addressed in serial order. Addressing racism won't eliminate sexism. Addressing sexism won't end racism. Gay people are not going to stop being bashed to death when a straight white woman or a straight Black man get into office.

One form of oppression is not more important than another. Some forms of oppression are not more egregious than others. Anytime we deny the humanity of an individual on the basis of his or her inclusion (perceived or actual) in a group , we are enacting oppression. Oppression is always unjust and unearned privilege always aids oppression. Until we are both willing to fight oppression and to give up privilege, we will be plagued with social injustice.

What About Darfur?

2008-05-13T23:33:00.001-04:00

What about Darfur?

What happened in Nazi Germany in
The 1940s
Was a terrible terrible thing
A crime against humanity
6 million killed
Waiting and waiting while
The United States did nothing

What happened in Rwanda
In the 1990s
Was a terrible terrible thing
A crime against humanity
800,000 dead in 100 days while
The United States did nothing

Now it is a new century
A new country
400,000 humans dead
People dying daily
In a land called Darfur
It is a crime against humanity
How can we do nothing?

Election Deciding itself without Mixed Me?

2008-05-06T23:00:00.006-04:00

As the race that many say wont end appears to be grinding to a necessary halt.......
it looks like my tallying of Clinton and Obama pros and cons must also come to a long overdue halt.....

Lets see where was I.....?

1. I dislike the fact that Obama renounced his own minister.
2. I dislike the familiar racism of the press in dealing with this issue more
3. I think Clinton should have stuck up for Obama in this (and thus dislike her for not doing so). Call me idealistic but I expected more from the wife of our first black president (ok, just kidding. Why DO people say Bill Clinton was black? Was it just the sax? Does nobody remember the welfare reform he instituted that has resulted in twice as many black children now being in foster care? Does nobody recall how he refused to apologize for slavery? Alas, I digress.....)
4. I like the fact that Obama appears to be forming a multigenerational coalition that it is interracial and includes feminists (Is this true or just really good PR?).
5. I like the fact Clinton is a woman (with at least some proto-feminist leanings). Even though I know biology is not destiny, I would like to think the sexism she has inevitably faced simply by living in this androcentric and sexist society with a vagina her whole life must have influenced her to take women''s issues more seriously than most men would.
6. I like the fact that Obama wants to "change Washington." Somebody needs to!
7. I dislike the fact that Clinton is in so tight with lobbyists and I like the fact that Obama is advocating election reform and has passed legislation in Illinois to limit the influence of lobbyists.
8. I like the fact that Obama is committed to renewable fuel sources
9. I dislike Obama's patriotic rhetoric (sounds far too bush-like to me. UGH. Stop the war already!) but am quite fond of his support of the new GI bill and his commitment to providing better health care (esp mental health care) for veterans.
10. I like the fact that Clinton has the support of many feminist organizations but I dislike the fact that they don't identify key feminist issues that she has un-equivocally supported (and no, claiming that health is a feminist issue and therefore her universal health care plan is a FEMINIST project does not cut it)
......
.......
......
BUT in the final analysis,
I think I have to vote for the MIXED MAN, despite his unfortunate possession of a male member. In the end, I found Clinton's campaign racism of the last few days unsettling and divisive.

I wanted to vote for a an anti-racist feminist candidate but alas, neither candidate appears to have proven they are both.

Still, Clinton has made it clear she has some work to do on race and I am still not clear on her feminism. Since Obama has yet to make any explicitly sexist or racist moves I am gonna have to go with him. I'll hedge my bets.

Of course my late decision may be mute if the numbers already indicate Obama has the nomination....but I believe in slow and careful deliberation.

Can I vote for Father Michael Pfleger?

2008-05-06T22:40:00.007-04:00

Notes from a disenchanted election observer....

Today my dad sent me a link (click the title to access link) to an amazing video interview of a white priest being interviewed about Reverend Wright. His name is Michael Pfleger.

The man is articulate, knows his facts, and has a passion we so rarely see expressed by public figures in the media. All efforts by the reporter to trip him up failed. He was unflappable: talked about racism, Martin, the right of Americans to dissent, poverty, our shameful foreign policy, and white politician privilege, all without breaking into a sweat. Here is a man with convictions able to stand up for what he believes in. Why didn't Obama respond the way this guy did?

This whole endless debate about Jeremiah Wright is God-awful (pun intended) and needs to end. This man - Micheal Pleger-does a pretty good job of putting the discussion to bed. Unfortunately he does not appear to be running for office.

Why the heck not?

Can I vote for Michelle Obama?

2008-04-27T22:25:00.004-04:00

I have been sitting on the election fence for some time now. So long in fact that my backside is beginning to get chaffed by the sharp edges of the fence and my political allies are beginning to wonder. You can only put off people for so long. Eventually they begin to fill in the blanks with their own answers. They become suspicious. They come to unsound conclusions. They talk.

In order to save myself the effort of endless diversionary moves, I have of late been doing some serious online research on the candidates. I was a Kucinich delegate in the last election so I needed some time to mourn his no longer being a candidate. It looks like I will have to settle for a less progressive alternative.

So, publicly, I am working on a tally of pros and cons for Clinton and Obama. Privately I am fantasizing about various political coups. Can Michelle Robinson Obama be the first black AND woman president? Can she and Kucinich team up for a super ticket? She is smart, articulate, incredibly well-educated, and is a mother. What is not to love?

But back to the tally.......

1. I like Clinton''s universal healthcare plan
2. I like the fact that Obama spoke out against the Iraq war when it was not popular to do so
3. I like Clinton's plans to make higher education more accessible and to institute student loan forgiveness
4. I like the fact that Obama is mixed like me and as a result identifies with a great many people. I like what he calls, "the sum of [his] parts"
5. I dislike the fact that neither one of these candidates appears to be unapologetically feminist. Saying that you support a woman's right to choose but consider abortion "horrible" and insist it should only occur on "rare" occasions (Clinton) or saying you support a woman's right to choose but sympathize with the anti-choice people because they alone understand the "moral" implications (Obama) does not cut it.
6. I like the fact that both candidates want to leave Iraq but am unhappy with both their timelines. Exactly how many people have to die before we leave?
7. I like the fact that Obama has experience working against racial profiling and working for poor people.
8. I don't like the fact that Clinton voted for the Patriot Act
9. I disilike the fact that neither candidate supports gay marriage
10. I don't like the fact that Clinton argued in one of her speeches that if we voted for her, there would be a "wife, mother, sister and daughter in the White house." Shouldn't a woman candidate be beyond an androcentric relational female identity?
11. I find Obama''s stance on racism far too timid and Clinton's stance on racism invisible.

hmmm....

Can someone bring me a pillow for my toush? Alas, despite my best efforts, it looks like I am stuck on this fence a bit longer.....

"Indian Giving" and Other Racist Reminders

2008-04-19T20:46:00.008-04:00

Yesterday, while pet-sitting for a friend in Sanford, Florida, I stood out in her driveway loading luggage in my car when two young white males walked by. Apparently perturbed by my brown skinned self in their lily-white cul-de-sac and further enraged by my "Support Indian Sovereignty" bumber sticker, they felt the need to remind me of my place. One boy loudly shouted to the other one, ""Hey Look, An Indian Giver."

I didn't look up. They were trying to get a rise out of me and I was not going to appease them. Or maybe I was just too shocked? Or maybe because as a person of color, I have developed such a thick skin and a slow response time to potentially dangerous stimuli that it sometimes takes a while for racist and derogatory statements to register? I don''t know. Maybe I should admit I was scared but that feels like defeat so I won''t. I was pissed.

I had been warned about this particular town and maybe I should have listened but after living all over this country, its not clear to me that racism is something I can avoid. Last year I was in my front yard in an entirely different part of Florida when a car full of white boys drove by and yelled "nigger" at me. It was the "Space Coast"- where the average citizen has post-graduate education and an income over $50,000. You don''t have to be a redneck to be a racist.

Am I a Black or an Indian? Does it matter? Racists, it seems, come in many sizes and shapes and their hate adapts.

Whether it is the little white boy in Frantz Fanon's story, saying to his mother, ""Look, a Negro", teenage redneck white boys saying "'Look, an Indian Giver," or a car full of rich white boys yelling, "Hey, Nigger" its meant as a reminder to those of us brown-skinned humans who have forgotten what our position is in society.

Just in case for a moment we have imagined we are human beings
living lives full of inspiring possibilities and beautiful promise........

The racists are always there to remind us.

Barack, Hillary, and Mixed Me

2008-02-11T20:00:00.000-05:00

My Brown and Black family and friends want me to vote for Obama. My feminist friends, white, black, yellow, and otherwise want me to vote for Clinton. One of my Black feminist colleagues stopped to accost me the other day with the opening line, "You're voting for Obama arent you? Or am I gonna have to write you off as a friend?"

I am not answering any queries regarding my voting decisions this year because as a mixed race, multiply-positioned, radical, anti-racist feminist poet, I know better. There is no right answer. Barack could be my black daddy, Hilary could be my white mama and I still wouldnt be able to choose the best candidate for the job. Why? Because as mixed me I am always lurking in the shadows-- I am always running back and forth across the battle lines with plates of food and flowers. I like them both. But I know neither side represents me.

I have one fist raised in the air in a Black Power salute and my other hand is holding the latest draft of the ERA. I don't think I am alone but there is no guarantee I won't be taken out by those who perceive me as a singular trecherous crazy zebra lady. I think I will keep moving.

I want a candidate who will withdraw the troops yesterday. I want a candidate who will pass gay marriage legislation the day s/he gets into office. I want a candidate who is not afraid to talk about race- someone who is ready and able to begin writing anti-racist legislation designed to pick up the slack where affrimative action failed. I want a president who will make a formal and unabashed apology for slavery, and hold nationwide conferences on reparations.

I want a presdient who will pass a bill for universal healthcare. I want a president who is not afraid to call him or herself a feminist and to confront anyone who calls a woman of stature, whether it is Dr. Rice or Senator Clinton, out of her name. I want an openly pro-choice, pro-emergency pill, pro-birth control president. I want a woman or man in office who considers the rape and murder of thousands of women yearly by their boyfriends and husbands a crisis worthy of being declared a state of emergency.

I want a president who is going to destroy all the nuclear plants, nuclear weapons, and coal-burning plants in the US and begin a government-sponsored green energy, solar power retrofitting project for the nation. I want a president who is going to end poverty during my lifetime, abolish the debt of all the third world countries, and make it his or her goal to bring world peace during his/her administration.

I want a president who is going to take medicine making out of the hands of pharmaceuticals and put it in the hands of people who care about healing the planet.

I want a woman of color in the Oval Office. A gay woman of color preferably. Lets get one who grew up poor while we are at it. She should be radical, a feminist, a womanist, a woman who speaks more than one langauge- a kick-ass woman. She should be angry. She should be passionate and loving- unafraid to cry or laugh or yell in public. She should be a woman-dientified woman. Someone who can appeal to as many of the disadvantaged, oppressed, and marginalized Americans as possible. Someone who believes justice is the greatest goal.

I think my sister should run for office. I think she is the only one qualified to address all the issues that matter to me.

My woman is not running for office....yet

In the meantime, I wish both Clinton and Obama the best.
ABB

10 reasons why you should never ask a mixed person the question, "What are you?"

2007-12-21T00:33:00.000-05:00

1. It is customary to use the pronoun "who" when talking of persons and to use the word "what" when talking about things. While it is appropriate to ask a mixed person who she is, it is not appropriate to ask her what she or he is. What we are is human.

2. If you feel compelled to ask someone what they are it is probably because you have never seen someone who looks like them before. This means you are ignorant. Asking your question will make your ignorance public. Is that what you want?

3. The compulsion to racially categorize every person you meet is one you should resist. The desire to put people in boxes is rooted in a fear of the unknown. Indulging one's fears is never good.

4. Without racial categories racism cannot persist. Do your part to be a part of the solution not a part of the problem.

5. Knowing the exact ethnic or "racial" ancestry of a person will not tell you WHO they are.

6. Most mixed people find this question very annoying. Some find it offensive. No one finds it sexy.

7. Many mixed people (like myself) are fond of giving false answers to the question just to mess with monoracials stupid enough to ask. Is being made a fool of a risk you are willing to take?

8. You are more likely to get laid if you ask better questions like: How did you get such cool hair? Do you taste as good as you look?

9. If you are only asking what racial components a person is composed of so you can then reduce him or her to one race (i.e black +any race= black, white+Mexican= Mexican) why bother asking? Go ahead and jump to your own conclusions and spare the mixed person the pain of witnessing you do your "monoracial math".

10. You might get an answer you can't handle.

All I want for Christmas Hannukah Kwanzaa, the New Year

2007-12-03T18:30:00.000-05:00

1. More national holidays (Sri Lanka has about 30, lets catch up people!)

and in particular more holidays that are not dedicated to the celebration of war or the memory of dead white men who owned slaves (Washington) or recommended the extinction of Indigenous peoples (Lincoln) or lead a campaign of extinction (Jackson).

1b. Is it too much to ask that ONE holiday be dedicated to a woman? Just One?

1c. The national recognition of non-Christian religious holidays (Hindu, Judaic,
Islamic, Indigenous, Vodun. Santeria, Native American Church,Latin/Catholic
(think Day of the Dead)

2. To become the first poet to earn a million dollars as a result of poetry CD
revenue.

3. World Peace (overdone, I know but its elusiveness compels me....)

4. Invitations to perform my poetry in Tahiti, Ghana, Italy, Peru, London, South
Africa, Ireland, and Brazil.

5. The legalization of Gay Marriage and Gay adoption worldwide (straight people, get
over yourselves already!)

6.Reparations for the descendants of African slaves in the Americas ("white" people, get over your guilt already)

7. National Subsidy for any and all "feminine" products (tampons, pads, instead, sponges, etc.) making them all free for all women for all time.

8. National Public recognition, acknowledgement and gratitude paid to all women for
the pain and inconvenience they endure each month for their pivotal role in ensuring the survival of the species (men need to recognize!)

9. A Teddy bear for every child in the world (shout out to Joan Piper for organizing
the teddy bear drive in Volusia County! Way to Go!)

10. More rap music/hip hop dedicated to positive social change (shout out to Cornel
West! Way to go, brother!)

11. An international campaign to educate little boys and little girls (it may be too
late for us older folks) about the female body, female sexuality and in particular to educate them on the existence of the clitoris, its ability to produce pleasure in the absence of penises, or any risky sexual behaviors (numerous benefits of this campaign include bit are not limited to: empowerment of girls, reduction in STDs, and aids rates, reduction in date rapes, unwanted pregnancies, and orphans; overall increase in joy levels worldwide)

12. The overthrow of the Bush dynasty (Can I get a witness?)

13. Universal Free Health care (yes, that includes abortions)

14. Free university educations for all Americans and residents (Can a sister get a degree without starving?)

15. The organization of a federally-funded Task Force Against Misogynistic Terrorism
to end the epidemic of rape/woman beating/homicide rates in the United States

16. Free cake

Dozing Off in the Academy

2007-11-27T03:47:00.000-05:00

In my dreams I am a poet who travels the world armed with inspiring words that eradicate suffering and induce bliss.

In my waking life I have a job where I am expected to act serious, do serious things and take myself and my co-workers seriously. More and more I find it hard to remember who I really am. It seems I have lost track of that silly justice-loving artsy woman I used to be. I waste countless hours ironing shirts, gelling my hair, collecting toll money, buying gas, grading papers, sitting in meetings, filling out forms, and consulting calendars. Why?

Will my students go out in the world and do amazing things? And if they don't does my day job matter? Does the time I do in the "Academy" mean anything in the larger scheme of things? Or is it just a "day job" -a way to pay the bills while I write the next great American poem? A respectful way to make a living if not to live?

When I was a student (13 years of my life, not counting k-12) I imagined that becoming a professor would allow me entry into a wonderful intellectual community, a Beloved Community full of people with high ideals and brains to match them. Nobody told me the truth about the Academy.

Dr. King’s "Beloved Community"
was "a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood... international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict." (King Center literature)

Is there some way to create such a community? I would like to think so, even if the Academy might be unable to host such a place. Or maybe King's ideas are too old and we need to come up with new ones? After all, King was a very serious fellow. How do we inject joy into the equation? I think we need a community for people like me. Maybe we should call it the Blissful Community.

In the Blissful Community beauty, joy, wisdom, and love will be the goal of all activities. Dialogue and Creative Productions will be the vehicle and silliness and foolishness will be required. Hmmmm. Will have to work on this idea......

Poems To Write: A List

2007-11-19T23:36:00.000-05:00

Poems To Write

1. a poem to end all wars
2. a poem to end all rape
3. a poem to make people realize how foolish white supremacy is
4. a poem that can be recycled
5. a poem that doubles as a fractal of all other poems
6. a poem that makes bitter and lonely old people laugh
7. a poem that turns love into hate, pain into joy, and grey into purple
8. a poem to bring the endangered animals back from the brink of extinction
9. a poem that tastes like chocolate, smells like roses, and feels like good sex
10. a poem that everyone thinks is about them